Forecast to help cut haze
Posted Aug 22, 2010 1:10 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
We’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to all the smoke lingering above Calgary from the BC forest fires but the forecast for Sunday will help.
After seeing record lows in air quality in the city on Friday, winds from the southwest blew a lot of the smoke out of the city on Saturday, making it not quite so heavy.
660News Meteorologist Jill Taylor says the air quality has definitely improved.
She says we’ve had a change in the upper level winds and the showers and cooler temperatures in the forecast will help.
However, until the situation completely subsides in British Columbia with no new forest fires, she says there’s still the risk of some of that poor air quality reaching Alberta.
Calmer conditions were allowing firefighters in BC to gain somewhat of an upper hand in their battles and against well over 200 fires.
Most of B-C has a fire danger rating of high to extreme, but officials are hoping cooler conditions and scattered showers will decrease fire behaviour.
There have been more than 14-hundred wildfires in B-C since April and they’ve scorched more than 27-hundred square kilometres of land.
Health officials in Alberta and Saskatchewan say there is reason for concern, because the smoke can cause severe trouble for people with conditions such as asthma, bronchitis or emphysema.
