Have you noticed that haze in the sky lately, or a strange orange tint over the last week or so?

Well we have our neighbors to the north to blame, as National Weather Service meteorologist Kurt Kotenberg explains.

“Basically there are over 180 wildfires burning across British Columbia in Canada right now. And basically the upper level winds in what’s called the jet stream, which is where jets fly about 20,000 feet off the ground to get a nice tailwind, that has been transporting a lot of the smoke from Canada here to the upper Midwest.”

For now, Kotenberg says things should start to clear up but it’s possible the haze will return next week.

“The rest of this week it looks like we’ll start to see a little bit of a southerly shift, to those upper level winds.  So that should help keep the smoke up to our north in Minnesota, North Dakota and Canada.  It looks like this weekend we’ll start to get that northwesterly shift again on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of next week.  So if the fires are still going on, next week we may see a little bit of return of the smoky skies here in Iowa.”

Kotenberg says those who have respiratory issues may have difficulty breathing when the air is this smoky.  He encourages those people to not over exert themselves and spend as much time indoors as possible.