Not Your Typical Hazy Sunshine in the East
Friday, 11:00 a.m.
I went out for a nice bike ride late yesterday afternoon as part of a 'brick' workout (in this case, it was preceded by a swim), and I noticed that the sun was dimmed a bit. I naturally assumed it was high clouds doing the trick, and the occasional cumulus cloud that was drifting by to attenuate the sun. But as I started looking more closely at the sky and the area near the sun, it really had a yellowish tint to it. The air mass was dry, so it wasn't from a humid air mass, and it wasn't even remotely close to being hot! And I also noticed there was not optical effects around the sun - you know, a halo or a sun dog. And that pretty much was the giveaway that it had to be smoke from a fire somewhere.
Sure enough, look at the morning visible satellite imagery:
A wider view:
As it turns out, this smoke plume originates in the Northwest Territories, where there are a number of wildfires ongoing. Look at the 500mb analysis yesterday morning:
What moved into New York and Pennsylvania yesterday came through eastern Ontario and far western Quebec, and the tracer goes all the way back across Hudson Bay. And as you can see from the visible images, there's still a lot of it throughout the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states up into eastern Ontario and western Quebec.
I can recall many days of hazy sunshine, but it always occurred when the dew point temperatures were up, and the temperatures were at least in the 80s, often higher. It was bad enough growing up that at times despite the sun shining brightly, you really couldn't make out the definition of clouds if they weren't at least 45 degrees above the horizon. And that made it hard to see any 'CBs,' or cumulonimbus clouds, the precursors to summertime thunderstorms that would slice and dice the haze, heat and humidity. In fact, as the sun would sink into the western sky, it would go from hazy yellow to orange, then to red. On the worst days, it would actually disappear into the haze before it reached the horizon, the haze was so thick! Those days are thankfully long gone, which made yesterday and now today that much more noteworthy.
This afternoon, the sun will shine brightly in these affected areas, but the sky will have that yellowish-white appearance, not blue. The shadows won't be as sharp, and the high temperature might be down a degree or two. It won't be hot and certainly won't be humid. In fact, it will really be a nice day with that sunshine. And there really won't be any haze in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, it will be a day with hazy sunshine, albeit not the kind associated with heat and humidity.
