Under yellowed, ashen skies and wrapped up in the smell and taste of wet cigar, New Yorkers endured the city’s worst air quality in decades and briefly the worst globally on 7 June, as wildfire smoke from Canada drifted along the East Coast and created hazardous and unhealthy conditions for millions of people.
By late afternoon, New York City’s air quality index, or AQI, reached more than 400, a measurement of various air pollutants on a scale that goes up to 500. For comparison: last weekend’s measurements hovered around 30. Roughly 24 hours later, the index had dropped to roughly 160.
