Wildfire Smoke From Canada Creates Hazy Skies In Pittsburgh

By: KDKA-TV News Staff

PITTSBURGH (KDKA/AP) - Have you noticed the hazy skies over Pittsburgh today? According to the National Weather Service, you're seeing wildfire smoke.

NWS Pittsburgh says the sky is hazy because of wildfire smoke from Canada.

The National Weather Service in Cleveland and Charleston, West Virginia are reporting the same thing.

NWS Charleston says the wildfire smoke is high up in the atmosphere so it'll produce a hazy-looking sky that'll make for some pretty sunrises and sunsets.

The smoke will stick around for the next few days, NWS Cleveland says.

The largest wildfire in the U.S. torched more dry forest landscape in Oregon on Sunday, one of dozens of major blazes burning across the West as critically dangerous fire weather loomed in the coming days.

The destructive Bootleg Fire just north of the California border grew to more than 476 square miles, an area about the size of Los Angeles.

At the other end of the state, a fire in the mountains of northeast Oregon grew to more than 17 square miles by Sunday.

In California, a growing wildfire south of Lake Tahoe jumped a highway, prompting more evacuation orders, the closure of the Pacific Crest Trail and the cancellation of an extreme bike ride through the Sierra Nevada.

Northern California's Dixie Fire roared to new life Sunday, prompting new evacuation orders in rural communities near the Feather River Canyon. The wildfire, near the 2018 site of the deadliest U.S. blaze in recent memory, was 15% contained and covered 39 square miles. The fire is northeast of the town of Paradise, California, and survivors of that horrific fire that killed 85 people watched warily as the new blaze burned.

There were about 70 active large fires and complexes of multiple blazes that have burned nearly 1,659 square miles in the U.S., the National Interagency Fire Center said. The U.S. Forest Service said at least 16 major fires were burning in the Pacific Northwest alone.

The NWS shared a link where you can check out a high resolution model "that helps forecast vertically integrated and near-surface smoke potential in the near term."

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