A smoke advisory from Environment Canada on Tuesday morning was quickly lifted, but air quality in Calgary will likely deteriorate as winds from B.C. flow into the city later this week.<\/p>\n
The air quality index in Calgary reached 7 on Tuesday morning, as smoke from wildfires in the Northwest Territories drifted into the city. However, by the time it arrived in Calgary, surface-level winds in the city helped clear the sky.<\/p>\n
However, northern cities, including Edmonton, were choked with smoke, with that city’s air quality index touching 9, or high risk.<\/p>\n
Edmontonians who are coughing or have a sore throat are asked to consider “reducing or rescheduling strenuous activities outdoors.”<\/p>\n
The source of smoke in Alberta skies is about to change.<\/p>\n
“Now our winds have shifted,” said Janelle Gergely, meteorologist at Environment Canada.<\/p>\n
It means Calgary is poised to receive air from the Pacific Northwest, which will bring warmer weather and smoke from wildfires raging in B.C.<\/p>\n
As of Tuesday, four wildfires are burning out of control in the western province, posing a risk to public safety. Three of them are west of Kimberley, prompting evacuation orders for roughly 9,000 nearby residents.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a large fire near Boston Bar \u2014 an unincorporated community along Highway 1 in the Fraser Canyon, about 45 kilometres north of Hope \u2014 has also sparked several evacuation orders and alerts.<\/p>\n
The shift in winds is due to what meteorologists call Rossby waves, which are movements of the Earth’s atmosphere that form high-altitude winds, such as the jet stream \u2014 a rapid, narrow band of air current high in the atmosphere that also marks the separation between warmer and colder air masses.<\/p>\n
Predicting smoke is a challenge for meteorologists, Gergely said.<\/p>\n
“If all the fires went out, which they likely won’t, then we wouldn’t see the smoke,” she added. “All I can say is there’s the possibility that smoke could be moving over the Rockies from a different source.”<\/p>\n