Satellite views show enormous plume of wildfire smoke from Canada engulfing the New York City area

Satellite imagery captured on Wednesday afternoon showed in dramatic fashion how wildfire smoke emanating from remote Quebec, Canada, was carried southward and engulfed parts of New York, New Jersey, Connectictut, and Pennsylvania.

The heavy smoke peaked in the afternoon hours Wednesday as social media lit up with photos and videos showing the landscape throughout the region abruptly darken and turn a foreboding shade of orange as the plume of smoke enveloped the region.

From the watchful eye of U.S. weather satellites, it was easy to see why everything turned orange for several hours.

Animated loops captured by NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite and posted by Colorado State University’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere showed the dramatic moments when the thick clouds of wildfire smoke invaded the region and air quality indexes in and around the New York City metro area surged to historically dangerous levels.

The first satellite image below, which depicts a wide view of the northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada, shows winds carrying the wildfire smoke southward from Canada and into U.S. airspace.

A closer look at the Northeast shows the sweeping plume gradually moving through western New York and northern Pennsylvania as it approached the I-95 corridor. “I can taste the air,” Dr. Ken Strumpf remarked in a Facebook post from Syracuse, New York, according to The Associated Press.

Syracuse.com reported that the air quality index (AQI) in Syracuse skyrocketed to a hazardous level of 438 on Wednesday afternoon. The index measures air quality on a scale of zero to 500.

Zooming in even closer on the New York City metro area shows the smoke plume, which appears brown on satellite imagery, engulfing the New York City area. The smoke was so intense and close to the ground that many people reported being able to smell the scent of burning wood.

In New York City, the AQI shot even higher — all the way 484 during the afternoon hours, WABC reported.

The result on the ground was disruption to normal life as hundreds of flights were grounded or delayed due to low visibility at area airports, sporting events throughout the mid-Atlantic were postponed, and many people began donning masks once again, a reminder of pandemic life.

As the smoke peaked, video shot from New Jersey overlooking the Hudson River toward New York City showed the George Washington Bridge eerily disappearing into the cloud of apocalyptic-looking orange smoke.

The Empire State Building posted time-lapse footage on Twitter showing the iconic midtown skyscraper overwhelmed by the orange haze as the smoke moved through the city.

“Let's never do this again,” the social media manager running the building’s account quipped in the tweet that contained the video.

And farther south, “insane time-lapse video” captured by EarthCam showed how quickly and dramatically lower Manhattan was engulfed in orange on Wednesday. Many people pointed out similarities between the landscape of Mars and how things appeared around the New York area thanks to the influx of wildfire smoke.

By Thursday morning, hazy conditions still persisted around the New York City area, but points farther south were the places experiencing heavier clouds of wildfire smoke.

Flights in Philadelphia were delayed due to visibility issues, The New York Times reported, and disruptions throughout Washington D.C. mirrored those a day earlier farther north on I-95. Officials in the nation’s capital issued a ‘code purple’ air quality alert, indicating “very unhealthy air conditions for the entire public, not just those with respiratory illnesses” and advising residents to “stay indoors as much as possible” as well to wear N95 or KN95 masks if working outdoors is unavoidable.

On Thursday, ABC meteorologist Ginger Zee blamed a stagnant pattern known as an ‘Omega block’ — named due to the shape of the jet stream resembling the Greek letter Omega — for allowing the wildfire smoke to stream into the Northeast region and upend life for multiple days.

Zee went on to say conditions will clear around New York City and New Jersey on Friday morning, but smoke will persist for Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and points as far west as Pittsburgh and Detroit possibly into the weekend.

By Sunday into Monday, Zee said, a change in the wind direction, to southerly from northerly, will begin to clear things out, making way for a cold front to come through from the west and bring some much-need rain across the region.

The smoke is a result of hundreds of out-of-control wildfires burning in remote areas of Quebec, more than 1,000 miles from where smoke is disrupting life across much of the eastern U.S. According to Bloomberg, Canada is suffering its worst wildfire season on record.

Dry conditions are expected to persist across this part of eastern Canada, AccuWeather forecasters predicted, meaning wildfires may burn there throughout the summer.

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