Who’s responsible for the poisonous haze that blanketed the north-east this week, that turned the sky eerie shades of yellow and orange and made the air over New York City more hazardous – for a time – than in any other place on Earth?
The smoke is from the unprecedented wildfires that, first sparked by lightning, have been raging for weeks in Nova Scotia and Quebec; more than 450 are now burning across Canada. More than half of those are considered “out of control”. That ferocity is thanks in large part to the kinds of unusually warm and dry conditions that rising temperatures are making more common. Winds from a low pressure system then fanned the flames and sent them southward.
