Looking out the window lately has been a very interesting experience that we don’t normally have here in Toronto. We have been experiencing extremely high air quality numbers, which is something that we don’t normally get. In Ontario, we have a scale for our air quality of 0 – 11+ so that is something that most of us understand. Normally if we are having a bad air day the number is either a 5 or 6 during a summer.
This year and it is only the end of June as I am writing this, we have had air quality numbers of 11+ which is very bad. The 11+ was reached June 28th and these numbers are being reached because of the forest fires in Northern Ontario and Quebec. Looking out my window during the day, I can see the change in the sky from it being clear to it getting very hazy looking. There are other days when you look out in the morning to a hazy day, and it just gets worse as the day goes on.
It has been interesting looking at the sunsets when the sky is filled with the smoke because everything has an orange hazy to it. I hope that they can get all the forest fires under control so that homes can be saved. I think there is some rain in the forecast here, but there are also risks of thunderstorms, so that doesn’t help to get forest fires under control. Hopefully, in the regions where there are the fires, they just get rain.
The forecast for this summer is the risk of more forest fires than usual, so that means that we may also be dealing with more poor air quality days than normal. For people with lung and other health issues, please be careful when the air is poor.
The picture that is included in this post was taken when we had an air quality of around 7 and yes the sky was that orange/brown.
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