{"id":1003699,"date":"2026-08-16T03:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1003699\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T03:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:50:14","slug":"why-is-downtown-chicago-so-smokey-what-we-know-nbc-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1003699\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is downtown Chicago so smokey? What we know \u2013 NBC Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Smoke filled the air in part of downtown Chicago on Saturday evening around the time that a loud boom was heard. <\/p>\n<p>Around 7 p.m., smoke filled the air and caused low visibility between East Lake Street and Wacker Drive and North Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive. <\/p>\n<p>Video posted to social media showed a large plume of smoke rising into the air near the Fairmont Chicago hotel, located at 200 N Columbus Dr. <\/p>\n<p>Another video shared on social media also showed drivers stuck in a traffic jam on Lower Wacker Drive as fire fighters and other officials responded to the scene.<\/p>\n<p>An NBC Chicago producer in the area said he heard a loud boom just before smoke began filling the air, though it was not immediately known if or how the boom was related to the smoke. <\/p>\n<p>No additional information was immediately available. <\/p>\n<p>Check back for more on this developing story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Smoke filled the air in part of downtown Chicago on Saturday evening around the time that a loud&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1003700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,9814],"class_list":["post-1003699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-loop"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117103154116744442","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1003700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}