The air in Washington reached severely polluted levels Friday morning, as smoke rolling in from Canadian wildfires sent residents indoors for a reprieve from hazy skies.
The air in the capital was rated very unhealthy, or code purple, the second-worst rating for air quality levels, next to code maroon, as of 9 a.m., according to IQAir. AccuWeather rated the air quality as “dangerous,” stating that any exposure to the air, even for a few minutes, “can lead to serious health effects on everybody.”
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Later in the afternoon, conditions are expected to improve slightly, reaching code red status. Over the weekend, air quality is projected to further improve. For now, residents across Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh are strongly advised to limit outdoor activity, keep windows and doors sealed, wear a mask if going outside is unavoidable, and run air purifiers indoors, according to IQAir.
“It’s just an ugly, smoky, and really warm morning,” Storm Team4 Meteorologist Chuck Bell told NBC News. “You should stay inside today. The air quality is just awful.”
“The more intense it is, the more particulates are in the air, and the problem with that is once we start breathing it in, it’s an irritant,” Dr. John Torres, NBC’s senior medical correspondent, added. “And so not only is it going to irritate our lungs, our throat, the back of our mouth, it’s going to irritate our eyes, our nasal passages, pretty much everything, and so you have to listen to these alerts.”
This is not the first time Washington has been impacted by Canadian wildfires in recent years. Smoke from the United States’s northern neighbor blanketed the capital and much of the eastern U.S. in 2023. In the latest episode, 194 out-of-control, large fires were burning in Canada as of late Thursday, with nearly 6 million acres burned so far.
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The fires, as well as blazes in Minnesota, have had sweeping implications for the U.S., impacting cities ranging from the Midwest to the Northeast. Through early Sunday, around 109 million people are forecast to be affected by unhealthy air quality or worse across the U.S., according to the Washington Post.
Parts of Minnesota have been under an air quality alert since Tuesday. Michigan’s environmental agency issued an air quality alert for the entire state for Wednesday and Thursday.
