WABASH VALLEY (WTHI) – Early Thursday morning the Wabash Valley had a cold front sweep through. This will not only drop temperatures over the next few days, it will also help clear out our atmosphere.
Our skies have been fairly hazy and milky over the last couple of weeks due to the wildfires that continue to rage on in the far west. The smoke from those fires gets caught up in the jet stream and eventually reaches us over the Wabash Valley.
Fortunately, our air quality has not been impacted. Below is a modeled image of where the smoke goes once it enters our atmosphere.
(Image courtesy of https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke)
The smoke gets lofted and once it moves over the Rocky Mountains, it stays up to 10,000-12,000 feet in the air when reaches the Wabash Valley.
If the smoke was more surface based, our air quality would drastically lower. There are multiple particles that can impact your health in wildfire smoke: Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and not to mention the hundreds of particles that could be burned from houses.
Early Thursday morning, a cold front swept through our region. This will and has helped clear out some of the hazy skies. At least for now. There are still over 79 large fires that are still ongoing in the west and more than 4 million acres have burned from these fires. Which means more smoke will likely impact our sky over the next several days.
In the latest modeled imagery for the continental United States, you can see the cold front that moved through. Yes, a lot of the smoke has cleared, however more smoke has filled back in over South Dakota, Iowa, and far western Illinois and will return over our skies.
(Image courtesy of https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke)
Does the smoke have any impact on us other than hazy and milky skies?
Yes, it does very slightly. Daytime high temperatures can certainly be a few degrees cooler and overnight temperatures may be a few degrees warmer.
In the illustration below when you add smoke during the day, the sun’s powerful rays do not fully make its way to the surface. Essentially, some of the Sun’s rays will be re-emitted back into space. This will simply not warm us up to the full potential.
At night, the smoke acts as a blanket in our sky. The radiating heat from the Earth’s surface will be more likely to stay below the smoke. So this may keep temperatures from falling fast. Just like a cloudy night, temperatures will likely be warmer than what is predicted.
