Smoke from Canada

It kept getting steadily smokier this afternoon and evening.  I figured one of the neighbors had lit a big burn pile.  When Victoria got home, she said a customer at Earl May had told her the smoke was from the wildfires on the Canadian border.  That’s over 1,000 miles away!  I didn’t think that could be.  While far-off wildfires have sometimes give the sky an odd color, especially when the sun is low, I don’t recall ever seeing smoke from such fires lying low and thick on the ground, and I certainly don’t remember ever being able to smell it.  Not when it came from that far away.  We decided to drive a little ways north, where the hills are higher, and see what things looked like. 

Every hill we crested only gave us another view of smoke-filled valleys, and a sun gone blood-red in a smoky sky.  I turned on the radio.  The news came on...  then the local news...  And there it was.

The Earl May customer was right (or almost right):  this smoke is from Canada!  But not from the border; rather, it’s from northern Canada, Alberta, to be precise, some 2,500-3,000 miles away!  The strange summer wind flow and cool fronts took the smoke plumes high into the atmosphere, then dropped it right down in our back yard.  The wind from another weather front should carry it all away by tomorrow.

Platte Center

Whitetail deer

Loup Canal