Smoke continues to blanket much of Southern B.C. Wednesday.
A new has been issued for the entire Southern Interior of the province, along with the Lower Mainland and the east side of 91原创 Island.
While a light haze hangs over much of the Okanagan, the Lower Mainland has been generally experiencing worse conditions.
The smoke has hung over much of Southern B.C since Sunday, with the majority of it coming from the United States – from Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
Senior Air Quality Meteorologist Donna Haga says the ridge of high pressure that has trapped the smoke above the province is expected to break down by the weekend. Rain is forecast for much of Southern B.C. over the next few days.
“That ridge is expected to break up with some unsettled weather coming in as we get into the weekend," she said. "The models are predicting that we might see improvements heading into the next couple of days, but it is a challenging thing to forecast.”
Haga says the widespread smoke this late in the fire season is very unusual.
“We've gone from experiencing a couple weeks of wildfire activity in July or August, to now we plan on being available for wildfire coverage starting in May all the way through to apparently October now,” Haga said.
“It wasn't until a few years ago in 2020 where we saw heavy smoke impacts across B.C. from the wildfires in California ... I think it was somewhere around the third week of September. And at that time, that was unprecedented in how late in the year we saw such significant impacts.
“And here we are a month later, again seeing large areas of the province under coverage for the smoky skies bulletin.”