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smoke from Canadian wildfires this week left Wisconsin in a state of haze and health warnings mid-week Milwaukee had the worst air quality in the nation. As the fires burn and new ones break out it could be a summer long threat. Kurt Kohtenberg with the National Weather Service in Green Bay shares the forecast for smokey conditions and thanks a lot for being here.
Absolutely. Thank you for having us. So as to this week's smokey conditions in Wisconsin do you know how they stack up historically like was this worse than we've seen?
Sure. So a lot of this is originating from the Canada wildfires and the wildfires at this current rate that they're going are definitely above normal. And what makes it unique for us here in Wisconsin this year is just the wind pattern in the wind direction
for the past past few weeks there's been a high pressure area over the center of the country. And so really taking a step back here what helps get the wildfire air down to us in Wisconsin is the wind direction at the high levels of the atmosphere.
And we've had this is pretty persistent weather pattern over the past few weeks. And that's been a very weather pattern that's had very strong winds over Canada. They've literally been pointing the winds into Wisconsin.
They're blowing it about 125 miles an hour at 20,000 feet so very high up there you're getting very fast winds that are ushering all of this wildfire smoke into Wisconsin.
And comparing trends from now versus the past 10 years the trends are above normal for wildfires have been occurring in Canada.
And it's just kind of a more of a local thing as to why that smoke is reaching us here in Wisconsin. Some years it's a different weather pattern where the smoke is not being brought down into Wisconsin.
But this year unfortunately it is and has been and it seems like the wildfire trend is going to continue to get worse in Canada.
So if the local weather conditions continue to bring that air down here unfortunately we may see a very smoky and hazy
your ahead here for the summer.
And yet the weather pattern that is bringing kind of the the wind aloft the smoke with it into Wisconsin. Is that something that you can predict going forward?
Um, so as we get better and better at our computer models over extended periods of time, generally like three to four weeks out, we can get a general sense of our winds going to be coming from the Northwest. Our wind's going to be coming from the Southwest as like is a big, is a big pattern.
So weather is like the day to day like so the overall pattern might favor winds from the Northwest for the next three to four weeks. But that's not going to be consistent in every day like some days. Well, it's from the Southeast, sometimes from the Southwest.
But when you put every single day on a map for like a four week period, that gets the general trend and that general trend. I do believe unfortunately it's going to continue to feature winds coming from the West and Northwest into Wisconsin.
So again, unfortunately, it's looking like we may see not every single day is going to feature poor air quality, but more often than not, we might start to see days with poor air quality here in Wisconsin for June, July into maybe even August and September.
Should we expect some version of this every summer?
So, yeah, so generally the, so it's kind of interesting to write word, but there's a trend looking in the past 10 years for wildfires. The number of wildfires might actually be on the decrease a little bit.
However, the wildfires that do start are more intense.
And so that's, that's what we're seeing. We're seeing a lot of large wildfires out there. So for instance, there's one wildfire that's burned over 100,000 acres so far, which is pretty large.
And just on a daily basis, you know, right now with it being so warm and dry out there, we're seeing wildfires pop up by the hour.
And so the challenge is, what are the weather conditions when those wildfires pop up? Is it occurring in a dry area? Is it occurring where there's strong winds to help the fire spread?
And so that's, you know, getting, getting down to that small scale, you know, we can't exactly predict that because we can't exactly predict where a wildfire will occur.
You know, kind of like a tornado, like a tornado, we can say, you know, like central Wisconsin's favored wildfires are kind of the same way, like, you know, the certain areas might be more favored, like they've had more dry conditions over the past few weeks,
and then looking ahead, like we're forecasting very strong winds. So if a wildfire were to occur in this dry area, the conditions are favorable for it to spread.
So it's kind of a weather community that that's what we're looking at, then bringing it back into Wisconsin, we take a look at the wind speed and wind direction aloft.
So, you know, if those wildfires occur in Canada, which, again, we can't predict exactly when and where they'll occur, but if they do, what will that mean for us in Wisconsin based on the wind speed and the wind direction.
So that's what we're looking at here.
And again, that's where our computer models come into play and we're showing that the conditions do remain favorable for dry hot weather up in Canada in northern parts of the United States.
And so if we continue to see those winds come towards us here in Wisconsin, I think we'll continue to see days of poor air quality.
I was going to ask, how do warming temperatures or climate changes play into these conditions?
So, yes, that's tough to tell at this point.
It's kind of one of those, the scientific community just needs more data and more years of data.
And again, here on the local level, it's not so climate change, just as much as it is the current weather patterns and the wind speed and wind direction, which.
Climate change really doesn't isn't influence on that. Like, this is more the small scale day to day type weather.
But overall the community, you know, there's there's fire weather experts, there's experts universities that are, you know, researching to see if there is or is not a link.
So that's kind of getting a little bit out of our area. So again, we're at the weather service here.
We're just looking at the day to day. I'm doing what we can to alert people and warm people if we're expecting for where weather conditions lead to poor air quality.
We're trying to get that alert out to the public to help keep families safe here in Wisconsin.
Well, thank you for that. So we should be checking with the National Weather Service if we want to know going forward in the coming days or weeks, whether we think we might have those kinds of smokey conditions.
Yes, and we work well with the Wisconsin DNR also. So like Wisconsin DNR and the EPA here causes a two week, we coordinate with the three of them. So I would check with those agencies as well.
All right, Kurt Kortenberg. Thanks very much.
Absolutely.
Thank you. I love talking to a meteorologist.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
And this is trying to get a little out of my, you know, I do tornadoes and thunderstorms.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, you mean you don't want to talk about global climate change?
Gotcha.
No comment.
Right.
No, well, thank you. You were great. Interesting.
All right. Yeah.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Have a good weekend.
All right.
You too. Take care.
Thanks.