NWS: Smoke From Canadian Wildfires Should Leave By Saturday
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Ohio Valley residents coughed and choked through another day of smoke from Canadian wildfires Friday, that day even worse than what they experienced Thursday. Yet the National Weather Service said the region should get a big break from that bad air by Saturday.
Matt Brudy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Pittsburgh office, said the Ohio Valley was seeing smoke infiltration between 200 and 300 parts per million early Friday, with the air quality worsening through the day. That put the area on a “code purple” alert, which meant that everyone was at risk of adverse health effects from the smoke.
More than 100 wildfires were burning in Canada on Friday and wind out of the north-northwest was pulling the smoke into the United States, and more specifically, into the Ohio Valley. The bad weather had forced the postponement of the City of Wheeling’s free screening of “Zootopia 2” at Heritage Port. A new date for the screening will be announced later.
Winds changed, however, starting Friday night and into Saturday, Brudy said. The direction shifted from a north-northwest trajectory to a southern one, pushing the smoke out of the area.
“By the time most people wake up (Saturday), the majority of the surface smoke should be out of here,” he said.
Rains will enter the valley Saturday, too, but Brudy said it’s the wind current that eliminates the smoke, rather than the rain.
That smoke should revisit the region Sunday into Monday, Brudy added, but it shouldn’t be to the levels seen Friday.
“I don’t seeing it being quite as concentrated on the ground,” he said.