New England Air Quality

[Tony's Dream]

I am thinking about taking a trip through the New England area in September. I will be traveling through VT, RI, ME, PA, and so on. I don't hear much about the air quality caused by the forest fires in Canada. Once in awhile there will be a news story, but not much more than that. Can anyone from that area give me a heads up on how things are going up there?

 

[maki2]

Open a weather app. Enter the location you are interested in visiting. The air quality will be shown in the results. If smoke is an issue it will also give a warning regarding that. There are websites that show where active regional fires are and what areas around the fire the smoke is covering depending on the wind direction.

As I am currently in wildfire country in Northern Arizona I have one of those types of wildfire location websites for this region as a link on my cell phone screen. It helps me keep up
with where the National Forest service is doing prescribed burns. When I was camped over by the Grand Canyon in early June I was getting some ash fall from one of those prescribed burns at my campsite. Fortunately not a lot of smoke from that fire. When I wanted to move my camp to over by Flagstaff I noticed that hwy 180 had smoke from a prescribed burn over a section of it requiring a pilot car delay so I chose to take a different route over on hwy 40 instead. I had been thinking of returning to the Canyon using a different route that follows the Siuth Rim but the fire map shows a natural wildfire is currently putting a lot smoke across that route.

You too can learn how to plan your travel using wildfire websites and weather reports too. Plus check local news station reports as well as air quality, smoke, fire danger and road closures is always news worthy.

September is a lot of weeks away and old fires can be put out and new ones happen in that time span so it is a bit early to make firm travel plans as to where not to go.

I also subscribe to the local National Forest Facebook pages for the Forest areas I am camping in this summer. They post ongoing information about current fire situations on those pages.

 

[maki2]

Also to get recent news reports in a specific location about a particular subject use a defined keyword search.
For instance I used this keyword string “news today Maine Canadian wildfire smoke” It led me to this useful webpage that gives current updates on that situation. You can bookmark it to use in your fall travel planning.
https://www.newscentermaine.com/amp...moke/507-ed5f222c-aade-49fc-a9c5-e216ba4c5cfe

 

[Morgana]

Here's the AirNow.gov current air quality reading for Millinocket, Maine (gateway to Baxter State Park). Of course, from that website, plug in any location you like.
Here's AirNow's fire and smoke map.
A similar map from the New York Times.
And one from firesmoke.ca.
Seems like your target area is pretty clear right now, but a lot could change before September. I seem to remember some pretty apocalyptic pictures from New York? DC? just a few days ago?

Maybe plan 2 or 3 alternate routes just in case?

 

[Morgana]

Time it for the foliage season if you can.

 

[txmnjim]

my sister live near Brattleboro and said not bad now but it can change. this smoke map is very good
and i look at it often; https://fire.airnow.gov/

 

[tx2sturgis]

On that airnow map, I had to disable the monitor layer (the green dots) to be able to really see the smokey areas.

Once I did that it works well for me.

 

[Tony's Dream]

Thanks everyone!

 

[SnowbirdRuss]

I am thinking about taking a trip through the New England area in September. I will be traveling through VT, RI, ME, PA, and so on. I don't hear much about the air quality caused by the forest fires in Canada. Once in awhile there will be a news story, but not much more than that. Can anyone from that area give me a heads up on how things are going up there?

Yes, I am in Maine right now. When I was in Connecticut and maybe part of Massachusetts was when the forest fires from Canada was coming through, but that has long gone, the air is back to good quality at this time.... Have a great trip.... Russ