Sun blocked by smoke

Rowski · Jul 7, 2002

To day was supposed to be a sunny day. Turns out that the airflow out of the northwest causes the smoke from the Canadian wildfires to partially block the sun. The National Weather Service in Burlington VT issued a weather statement about the reduced visibility and added respiratory stress. It was really weird all day it was this yellowish bronze color. I did get a good odor of the smoke for about an hour. It kept the air temps down almost 10 degrees. You could actually see the plume of smoke on a visible satellite map in motion (via the internet), pretty neat.

Did anybody else have trouble seeing the sun, due to the smoke? How about the smokey odor? They say west side of New England got it the worst.

Attached is a picture of the sun around late afternoon. Not sure how it will come out, my monitor and/or video card is the greatest. But this is how the sun looked all day.

Youare · Jul 7, 2002

I live in the southwest corner of New Hampshire, 10 miles from Vermont 6 miles from Ma. I woke up this morning to the strangest yellowish sun light. I expected a nice sunny day like yesturday.

All day long the sky had an overcast look to it and there was a haze in the air. About 5:00 pm I thought I smelled wood smoke. My wife and I went into town to the store just after that and at one point the smell of smoke was really strong.

I guess this stuff will hang around until a west win blows it out to sea. I must admit I don't remember seeing anything like this before.

Randy

TerryinMD · Jul 7, 2002

Yep, we were supposed to have a sunny day hear in Western Maryland - Intersection of I70 and I81. It was overcaste in the morning and hazy this afternoon. The temperature may have reached 82 degrees by late afternoon.

I just read the report off of Drudge Report.

Terry

CSAW · Jul 7, 2002

It looked like that here in Fl. for about a month or so a few years ago. Actually you could not see the sun just a bright spot where it was. It didn't bother me because it blocked the sun out like a big cloud (I don't like the heat). Fires were burning everywhere, at one time we were making plans to evacuate but never had to. Quite an experience.

chim · Jul 7, 2002

Pretty much haze and a smoke smell here East of Harrisburg PA. Was just outside, and when standing about 20' away from the house in the dark, looking back towards the light from the garage, it is still visibly hazy. Didn't see hardly any sun today at all, but we had no clouds. The smoke smell wasn't the "fireplace in Winter" aroma. It was more like trash or industrial smoke. According to a local TV station, there was an air quality advisory today. Kids, oldsters and people w/ respiratory problems were advised to remain indoors.

Must be a heck of a blaze to smoke up such an area. Kinda surprised the media didn't make much of it till the air got hazy here...........chim

looch · Jul 8, 2002

Just got back from a weekend up at our hunting/fishing camp in northern Quebec - 40 miles of dirt, logging roads into the bush. The smell was quite strong up there. Woke up to 35 degrees this morning and it only got up to about 55 or 60 by the time we left at 5pm. Made for very strange looking weather.

Hawkflyer · Jul 8, 2002

Kind of unreal, I was actually flying when the smoke arrived in Virginia. You could actually see the visibility change rapidly in very short periods of time. While the smoke did calm the air down a bit (it was really bumpy till the smoke came) it got dead calm by mid afternoon.The visibility got so poor that it was getting hard to see the ground and a lot of pilots flying under visual flight rules (me included) had to land. I talked to a guy that flew through the stuff down along the bay and he said he actually had to turn back because he completly lost reference to the horizon.

Boondox · Jul 8, 2002

My wife and I drove in to Burlington yesterday, and all the oncoming cars had this wierd reflection on their windshields. At first I thought the streetlights were on, but it turned out to be the sun. By the end of the day Tamara was having some respiratory difficulties, but it cleared after we shut all the doors and windows and ran the air cleaners. All day there was just a faint odor of smoke. Took me a few hours to realize it wasn't coming from the remains of the last burn pile.

Pete