Hazy skies in Vermont: What to expect from Canadian wildfire smoke

If you were thinking about hiking in the Green Mountains this week, you may want to wait out the wildfire smoke first.

Smoke from wildfires in Canada have been announced to be moving across the United States, affecting many in the country.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jessica Storm said if you’re at a flat elevation in Vermont, wildfire smoke just looks like a haze in the sky, but if you were up in the mountains, you could see the thick smoke visibly hovering in the sky.

“We’ll kind of have to see how things shake out with the system that comes through this weekend,” Storm said. “It looks like it’s going to be pretty rainy so probably not much availability to see the smoke.”

Here’s what you need to know about Canadian wildfire smoke in Vermont.

How bad is the air quality?

The air quality in Vermont is forecasted to be in the mid-70’s of the Air Quality Index today, according to AirNow, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s tool for monitoring air quality.

The Air Quality Index measures how polluted the air around an area is, the AirNow website said. A place that has an AQI of below 50 has good air quality, whereas a place with an index of over 300 constitutes a hazardous area to breathe in.

So, Vermont’s air quality right now is less than good, but hasn’t become unhealthy or hazardous yet.

Wildfire smoke map

The last major wildfire that Canada had was in 2024, where thousands were evacuated. As many as 17,000 people have been evacuated in Canada due to these ongoing wildfires.

How long will the wildfire smoke last?

The meteorologist said that the smoke will start to gradually decrease around Thursday night through Friday.

Margie Cullen contributed to the reporting of this story.

Rin Velasco is a trending reporter. She can be reached at rvelasco@gannett.com.