This is pretty out of my wheelhouse, but I think its important to keep you in the know. Thanks to out of control wildfires in Canada, a ton of smoke has been lofted into the atmosphere. Here is an image via GOES 19, a high resolution geo-stationary satellite over the great lakes. Brown is smoke, green is terrain, white are clouds.
AQI which = Air Quality Index. This measures PM10 (10 micrometers(um) or smaller) and PM2.5. PM 2.5 is far more hazardous due to the small size and its small size, it can naturally bypass traditional bodily defenses. PM2.5 density is generally measured as ug/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter)/ 35 is generally not ideal, while 150 is generally not recommended to be outside at all.
Models generally blow absolute chunks at modeling wildfire smoke, but for illustrative purposes, its good enough of an idea of how widespread the near surface level smoke can be expected in ~48 hours.
Primary steering mechanism is expected to be a huge ridge at 500 mb (mid levels of the atmosphere) covering the 4 corners of the USA (az/nm/co/ut), with the edge of the ridge extending from Virginia to Manitoba. It is possible that the smoke will loose density as it fans out from the source of the fires, however this is not a guarantee. 2023 was the last time we had such a large outbreak of highly dense smoke. I was working in Front Royal as an ecology field tech and we had a stop work order due to the hazardous AQI (150+ (40-50 ug/m3).
Wildfire smoke tends to have the interesting effect of tempering outdoor temps and suppressing thunderstorm development.
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