(Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
Historic levels of smog are hitting cities around North America due to ongoing Canadian wildfires, according to reports.
New York City was under an Air Quality Health Advisory until Thursday morning due to wind patterns pushing smoke across the five boroughs. The smoke is moving south from more than 150 forest fires in Quebec, the New York Post reports.
One hundred ten of those fires have been deemed out of control, per the outlet. Meanwhile, according to USA Today, at least 100 million people are affected by air quality alerts as of Wednesday afternoon.
Earlier Wednesday morning, the Big Apple was surpassed only by New Delhi, India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, regarding air pollution. However, those two cities’ air quality issues are unrelated to the ongoing wildfires.
“We’ll be in this same kind of weather pattern through today, and tomorrow as well,” Fox Weather meteorologist Stephen McCloud told the Post. “By Sunday night we should start to see improvement as a new storm system from the west approaches and starts to move this storm system out.”
The wildfire smoke is so widespread that it was visible from the International Space Station, per CBS News.
