So Far This Summer, 1.9 Million Acres Of AK Has Burned; Smoke Reaches To South Carolina

[hatrack]

Alaska is on track to have one of its worst wildfire seasons on record, propelled by a combination of warming average temperatures, a historically mild, relatively snowless winter and extremely mild spring.

So far this year, 1.88 million acres have gone up in smoke, from 617 individual fires. June 2015 beat June of 2004 in terms of both number of fires and amount of acres burned, which means this year is now outpacing the state's worst wildfire season ever recorded.

With hundreds of fires still burning in Alaska and in Canada, smoke has made it all the way across the Midwest and Mid-South to the Atlantic Coast, crossing over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on Wednesday.



In fact, the smoke has been so thick in some parts of the lower 48 states that daytime high temperatures were lowered by a few degrees compared to what they would have been in its absence. So many fires are burning simultaneously in Alaska that the U.S. Air Force has joined the fight, using Lockheed C-5M Galaxy aircraft from California to ship firefighting supplies to Alaska. Typically, these supplies are trucked up the Alaska highway from Canada, but the urgency of the fire situation meant there was a need for a faster delivery, according to the Alaska Division of Forestry.



EDIT

http://mashable.com/2015/07/01/alaska-wildfires-smoke/

[mackdaddy]

1. Moon-rise here in Ohio bright orange color from smoke particulates...

Last several nights.