Wildfire smoke returns to St. Louis, orange alert

Publish date: 2024-05-02

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ST. LOUIS — We’ve got a couple of nice days of weather ahead when it comes to temperatures and humidity. The one hiccup is that we’re going to get some of that wildfire smoke back into our atmosphere. There is an orange air quality alert again for the St. Louis area and much of southern and central Illinois.

The orange level alert means that the air may be unhealthy for some, especially those with heart and lung conditions. You may want to limit your time outside. A thin layer of smoke will be in the metropolitan St. Louis area Thursday and Friday.

Much of the northeast United States is under a purple and brown air quality alerts. There is a higher concentration of smoke, leading to near blackout conditions. Smoke will continue to be over the northeast with haze across the region.

The Associated Press reports that with weather systems expected to hardly budge, the smoky blanket billowing across the U.S. and Canada from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia should persist into Thursday and possibly the weekend.

That means at least another day, or more, of a dystopian-style detour that’s chased players from ballfields, actors from Broadway stages, delayed thousands of flights, and sparked a resurgence in mask wearing and remote work — all while raising concerns about the health effects of prolonged exposure to such bad air.

U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Ramsey says the weather system that’s driving the great Canadian-American smoke out “will probably be hanging around at least for the next few days.”

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