UPPER DELAWARE RIVER VALLEY — The river valley, and much of the tri-state area got a crash course on the interconnected earth systems during the week of June 5. Smoke from the wildfires burning in Canada, blanketed the region, filling the air with unhealthy pollution.

This pollution, according to Mark Wysocki, senior lecturer at the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, a part of Cornell University, was made up of small particulate matter, which is under 2.5 microns, and able to bypass the bodies natural filtering of air through our noses, going directly into our lungs. These particules are small enough to immediate transfer to our bloodstreams, and can effect lungs and hearts of people who are most sensitive to these types of irritant. 

It’s all in the wind

According to Wysocki, the earth is one system of wind patterns: some that are global, regional and local. And how they interact with each other is how a planetary scale storm and wind can affect the local area. This happens in reverse, as local systems affect regional systems and global systems.

The air that hovered over the region Wednesday through Friday moved south to Washington, D.C. and eastward over the Atlantic Ocean. Another wind pattern moved in to move the smoke over Vermont and New Hampshire.

With the fires still burning, and expected this summer to burn for a while, he said that it might not be uncommon that we will again have days or even a week with smoke depending on wind patterns.