A haze of wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada blanketed the Catskill Mountains in the days leading up to the recent holiday weekend. The air quality levels displayed in my weather app hovered between 100 and 200 on the US air quality index—not as bad as it had been a month before, but still unhealthy, especially for sensitive groups. Although my friends and I had come up for a long weekend in the fresh country air, we kept the doors shut and the windows closed tight, venturing out only for short periods until a front blew most of the smoke away.
Expect more days like those, New York Governor Kathy Hochul warned.
“There is no end in sight,” Hochul said on June 29. “This is the new normal for New Yorkers.”
Jessica S. McKenzie 