U.S. Air Quality

Very Unhealthy AQI in Fairbanks, Alaska

According to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center (AICC), two new wildfires were reported yesterday and are already being monitored. Also a statewide fire summary reports that: "As of 9 am Friday, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center tallied 466 fires and 1,847,361.5 acres burned this year. 71 fires are active across Alaska. 11 fires are staffed. At this time last year, 334 fires had burned 90,183.5 acres.".
From Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB) we have the information that the air quality is Very Unhealthy with a 24 hour average of PM2.5 of 171.0μg/m³ as of 4:00 PM.
The first image from MODIS Terra today (top, left) shows the fire spots in interior Alaska and the smoke that is being transported to Yukon Territories and Northwestern Canada which might getting some of the smoke from the British Columbia fires through Alberta (top, right). SSD fire team at NOAA reports that "in GOES 12/11 satellite imagery, the smoke from the British Columbia wildfires is not quite combining with the smoke from the Alaska/Northwest Canada wildfires, but late evening GOES-12 imagery might prove different.".

Here you see a zoom out in Google Earth showing a visible area of smoke from Alaska and British Columbia fires. In fact even the smoke over Alberta can be seen as a hazy region from 3,500 km of altitude.

Below are the images of the day for the AQI in US. On the left, the PM2.5 loop for today shows that the Northern states closest to the fires in British Columbia were not being affected at ground level. On the right, a closer look in California and for the ozone levels in US, here.