Smoke from western wildfires creates hazy sky in Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Did you notice the slight haze in the otherwise blue skies today?
You might think those are clouds, and usually you wouldn't be wrong, but this time that haze is caused by something much different and something quite far away: the western wildfires.
The wildfires that have been in the headlines lately release a lot of smoke into the atmosphere. That smoke gets caught in the upper-level wind flow. Those winds can transport the smoke long distances -- in this case, a long enough distance to make the skies over western Pennsylvania a little hazy on an otherwise beautiful day. The map above shows the concentration of smoke in our atmosphere. The yellows, oranges and reds indicate higher concentrations of smoke.
Most of the smoke indicated here is high up in our atmosphere, so no impacts should be felt here at the surface. It does, however, show how "connected" our atmosphere is!
