SOUTHERN VERMONT — A thick veil of wildfire smoke high in the atmosphere is transforming the sky over our local Bennington and Windham Counties this week – casting an eerie glow, muting the sun, and leaving air quality in the moderate range – even as temperatures and humidity remain oppressive.

According to federal forecasters, the hazy and particulate-laden sky and unusual colors are the result of smoke from more than 830 active wildfires burning across Canada and northern Minnesota, funneled into New England by the jet stream and trapped over the region by stubborn weather patterns.

What people are seeing, and why the sky looks so strange

Over the course of Wednesday, residents across Southern Vermont reported the sky shifting from orangey‑yellow to umber to violet hues tinged with pink, with a yellow cast over the landscape and a deep red or dark orange sun, especially nearest to sunrise and sunset.

On a normal and clear day in Southern Vermont, tiny molecules in the atmosphere scatter mostly blue light, which is why the sky appears blue.

However, this week, the air is filled with larger particulate matter from wildfire smoke, which scatters longer wavelengths of light – oranges and reds – in a process known as Mie scattering (pronounced “mee,” and named after physicist Gustav Mie who first published the mathematical description of this weird-looking light-scattering phenomenon).

Due to Mie scattering, the sky can appear milky white, with sepia tones, or faintly pink‑violet, instead of blue. The sun may appear like a dark orange or red disk, especially when low to the horizon, and sunlight at ground level feels weaker and more filtered, as if being viewed through rose-tinted glasses. And these are the effects that we are currently experiencing.

Where the smoke is coming from, and how it travels

Federal agencies have reported that more than 800 wildfires are burning in Canada, with additional fires in northern Minnesota near the Canadian border. Many of these are large, and burning through dense boreal forests with little or no containment.

These blazes have triggered evacuations at their locales and in the surrounding areas, and are attributed to areas experiencing intensive drought.

The smoke created from these wildfires reaches Vermont through a series of atmospheric steps.

The jet stream’s “conveyor belt” of high‑altitude winds scoop up smoke from the Central Canada region and carry it southeast across the Great Lakes and into New England.

A high‑pressure “lid” forms, where a strong high‑pressure system causes air to sink (a process known as subsidence) which then presses some of the elevated smoke closer to the surface.

A stalled weather pattern can occur, where slow‑moving systems over Canada and the Northeast keep the flow of smoke aimed at the region instead of sweeping it quickly away.

These patterns mean that – even though the fires are hundreds of miles away – fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from those blazes is now suspended over Vermont and neighboring states.

Local air quality: Moderate, with cautions for sensitive groups

On Wednesday, air quality in Bennington and Windham Counties sat in the “moderate” category, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) fluctuating roughly between the low‑50s and high‑90s. This was driven primarily by PM2.5 from the presence of wildfire smoke.

In practical terms, most healthy adults can go about their normal routines outdoors. However, more sensitive groups – older adults, children, people with asthma, COPD, or heart disease – are advised to limit prolonged or heavy exertion outside, especially during the haziest periods.

Those with prolonged exposure may notice throat irritation, mild coughing, or even eye discomfort – particularly during intense exercise.

Residents can track real‑time conditions using the federal AirNow “Fire and Smoke Map” and Vermont‑specific dashboards, which show localized AQI readings as plumes shift during the day on Thursday.

How the smoke is affecting storms, heat, and humidity

The same smoke that is changing the sky’s color is also subtly reshaping the weather over Southern Vermont.

Forecasters note several key effects. These include solar dimming, where smoke particles in the upper atmosphere scatter and absorb sunlight, acting as a partial sunblock. This can shave a few degrees off daytime highs, compared with what might otherwise occur under clear skies.

It can also include “capping inversion.” By warming the air aloft, the smoke can create a “cap” – a warm layer that suppresses rising air. This can weaken thunderstorms, even when surface heat and humidity are high.

Another key effect is cloud microphysics, where extra smoke particles provide millions of tiny surfaces for water vapor to cling to, producing many “very tiny” droplets rather than fewer larger raindrops. These smaller droplets don’t fall as easily, which can reduce heavy rainfall and the actual structure of a storm.

For example, on Tuesday night, Southern Vermont sat under extremely high humidity fueled by warm southerly winds pulling tropical moisture up the East Coast ahead of a cold front. Under normal conditions, that setup could have produced stronger thunderstorms. Instead, wildfire smoke likely muted the intensity of those expected storms, leaving the region with more of a muggy “soupy” feeling than the explosive severe weather that many expected.

Short‑term outlook for southern Vermont

Through Wednesday and into Thursday, forecasters expect the following for our Southern Vermont region:

• Sky conditions – Persistent haze and milky skies, with periods of thicker smoke as the plumes shift southward and then rise again. The sun may remain reddish or orange at times.
• Temperatures and humidity – Highs in the mid‑80s, with oppressive humidity at times, especially ahead of the next cold front.
• Air quality – AQI values are forecast to remain in the moderate range, occasionally bordering on “unhealthy for sensitive groups” during heavier smoke intrusions (these are expected through Thursday).
• Showers and storms – As another cold front approaches us on Thursday, scattered showers are expected with isolated downpours and localized “non‑severe” thunderstorms. (Smoke may again limit storm strength somewhat.)

By Friday, higher pressure and drier air are expected to build in from the west, bringing more seasonable temperatures in the upper 70s to mid‑80s, lower humidity, and improved air quality – though some high‑level haze may linger.

For now, we will continue to look at our landscape through our “rose-colored” glasses.

BOSTON (WHDH) – The You Got This center, run by Children’s Services of Roxbury, helps young adults coping with homelessness, mental health needs, and addiction.

The drop-in center also provides a space to create community.

One of the programs they center offers, freestyle Fridays, held on the first Friday of every month, gives members a chance to test out their rap skills.

Members said programs like these have taught them to be more confident.

“It’s a comforting area,” Deryq Samson-Brown said. “I’ve never felt like an outcast; I don’t think anybody has really felt like an outcast. It’s like a real accepting place.”

Samson-Brown said the center has inpsired him to pursue a career giving back to youth.

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David Cohen grew up playing on a wooden field.

“You had to be sure-footed,” he recalls about pickup games on Shadyside’s Roslyn Place, one of the nation’s few surviving wooden streets.

Cohen often talks up Roslyn while chauffeuring movie actors around town. “Inevitably,” he says, “they want to come see the street.” It also draws many walkers, bicyclists, bachelor and bachelorette parties, photographers, artists and people who make rubbings of its oak blocks.

Many other Greater Pittsburgh streets are paved with bricks or stones of various shapes and shades. These old-time toppings seem to be popular but problematic.

They’re considered handsome reminders of Pittsburgh’s past. They’re expensive but durable. They sprout weeds but seldom potholes. Some may reduce runoff and heat.

But they’re bouncy and clattery. They can be slippery when wet or icy. Though many have concrete bases, they tend to develop ruts over time.

Officials often wonder whether to maintain historic pavers or consign them to history. Jacob Russell, Verona’s borough manager, says, “It’s always an ongoing debate.” 

Here and there

According to a list of Pittsburgh’s nearly 20,000 official street segments, 623 have bricks, 295 quarried stones (often incorrectly called cobblestones, which are long out of use), and 840 concrete, while the rest are asphalt or “unknown.” But be warned: Some entries on the list are outdated, and one’s been wrong all along. It calls Roslyn asphalt.

Then again, Knoxville’s Brick Way is listed correctly. It’s plain asphalt, at least today. Brian Kell, a chronicler of Pittsburgh’s streets, can find no record of previous surfaces on this tiny street, first known from an 1887 plan.

Some streets with brick or stone sections are big and bustling, like downtown’s Grant Street. More seem to be small and quiet, like the Hill District’s Hollace Street. Some are fairly level, like Homewood’s Laxton Street. Others are dizzying, like Oakland’s Joncaire Street and Beechview’s Canton Avenue.

Older pavers seem most common in older neighborhoods, such as Hazelwood, but are rather randomly scattered in them. Squirrel Hill’s Murdoch Road has stone, brick and asphalt segments on different blocks. Middle Street on the North Side has a stone one and a brick one on the same block.

These pavers are also common in older suburbs, such as McKees Rocks, Oakmont and Sewickley. McKeesport once had a Brick Alley, named for its surface, though better known as a red-light district.

Allegheny County also has 26 miles of dirt or gravel roads, historic, but hardly beloved.

Streets through the years

According to several sources, including Robin B. Williams of historicpavement.com, the world’s first roads were unpaved, prone to dust, mud and washouts. American settlers topped “plank roads” with boards and “corduroy roads” with logs. Cobblestones proved tough on wheels. A mix of crushed stones was dubbed macadam for Scottish inventor John McAdam. Tar was added and one of the mixes dubbed tarmac.

Wooden blocks became popular, including an 1850s kind called Nicolson or Nicholson blocks, chunks preserved with creosote. So did granite, limestone or sandstone blocks, variously called sets, setts, blockstones or Belgian blocks. The 1870s brought bricks and asphalt. The 1890s brought concrete.

According to Joel Tarr in “City at the Point,” 19th-century Pittsburgh was quickest to pave the busiest or wealthiest streets, sometimes charging the property owners. Many other streets remained unpaved into the 20th century.

By the mid-1910s, wooden streets were already quaint, the look Roslyn’s developer apparently wanted for this cozy dead end, lined mostly with brick homes. It helped that his son owned a lumberyard, which supplied about 26,000 blocks.

Over the years, the city has replaced many of those blocks with newer ones. To spare them all, it blows and sweeps snow there instead of plowing it.

Williams says that the nation has just a few other wooden streets left, including Cleveland’s Hessler Court, part of Philadelphia’s South Camac Street, and Chicago’s aptly named Wooden Alley.

Beautiful and bumpy

Most locals praise vintage pavers.

“They’re the coolest things,” Kathy Lutz says of Bridgeville’s several brick streets. “They make me feel nestled in here.” They also remind her of a famous Beatles album cover. “We have Abbey Road in the middle of Bridgeville.”

A stone stretch of Bloomfield’s Lima Way is smooth enough for Kelly DiTullio to carry a heaping carton of strawberries home from the neighborhood’s farmers market without spilling any. “It’s charming,” she says, “especially when the greenery starts to grow in between.”

A woman identifying herself just as Kelissa says that her dog, Princess, likes Lima’s stones for relieving herself.

Locals see benefits even in these pavers’ bounces. Drivers slow down, and bystanders hear them coming.

In Mt. Lebanon Magazine last year, Abigail Schade Gary wrote about that suburb’s many brick pavers, “The charm! The distinction that signifies Mt. Lebanon!” Not quite as enthusiastically, she recalled sliding backward down them in her family’s station wagon. She liked them for sledding but not roller-skating. “Even if you could manage to stay on your feet over the bumpy surface, the unevenness made your teeth chatter.”

A few locals would update some retro roads. “Most of them are in such a state that they need to be paved over,” says Mt. Lebanon’s Greg Carvlin.

Cara Zlatos recently hit the bricks of Aspinwall’s Delafield Avenue after an appendectomy at UPMC St. Margaret. She says, “Every bump seemed to find its way straight to my sore abdomen.”

Melissa Lang O’Malley, Aspinwall’s borough manager, says that Delafield’s much-needed repairs will resume this summer.

Bicycles bounce too. According to Julie Walsh, spokeswoman for BikePGH, most riders prefer modern pavement for routine rides, but some choose brick or stone at times for fun, especially in challenging events like the Pittsburgh Roubaix and the Pittsburgh Dirty Dozen.

Bicyclist Henry Snyder of Squirrel Hill says that historic pavers “give you a little chance to experience what the Tour de France guys do in Paris. You don’t want to do it too long because it sends vibrations down your arm. For a block or two, it’s great.”

Saving surfaces

A 2018 Pittsburgh ordinance calls for preserving historic pavement where safe, unless 75 percent of the street’s property owners petition for asphalt. Eric Setzler, chief engineer of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, says that it costs $30 per square yard to resurface asphalt, versus $170 for brick or $200 for stone. But brick and stone can last for decades, especially on streets with light traffic.

“There are streets that are probably over 100 years old that have had minimal maintenance,” he says. “They will have some dips and bumps, but they are still in service. … The cost can even out a little.”

Aspinwall’s Lang O’Malley says that recent brick repairs cost about $12 per square foot versus barely $2 for asphalt, but might prove better investments over 30 to 50 years. Besides, “While modern infrastructure needs sometimes require difficult decisions, preserving that historic character where possible remains an important part of maintaining Aspinwall’s identity.”

In a 2016 study of Mt. Lebanon’s brick streets, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said, “Though costly to install, these streets maintain a good structural condition for decades and add beauty and history to the area.”

In 2020, a Carnegie Mellon University team estimated that Mt. Lebanon would save about $200,000 over 50 years by maintaining a stretch of brick 700 feet long instead of asphalting it. Ninety-six percent of residents surveyed said the bricks added character, and 82 percent would pay to restore them.

Safety matters, though. A steep brick stretch of that suburb’s Spruceton Avenue was asphalted after an official did a 360 on ice there.

Verona, on the other hand, simply closes a steep stone section of South Avenue during wintry weather.

PennDOT maintains just 0.2 miles of bricks or stones on state roads in Allegheny County: stretches of Chestnut Street in Coraopolis, Broadway in Stowe Township and Linden Avenue in East Pittsburgh. “Generally,” says PennDOT Press Secretary Alexis Campbell, “we end up paving them with asphalt.” 

Old pavers are often buried under asphalt but reappear in potholes. Others are removed and sometimes relocated. A few are part of the landscape of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Some that PennDOT removed from Castle Shannon Boulevard in Mt. Lebanon are parts of that suburb’s other streets.

Magic and texture

In the 2010s, resident Ned Schano led a campaign that won city landmark designations for Roslyn and specifically its wood. “Every day,” says Schano, “I make sure to step on the wood when I go outside. It has some magical powers.”

Cohen feels like Roslyn’s wood is ingrained in him. “It’s been a great texture for my whole life. To see it’s still here when so many other things have gone away, it’s amazing.”