Wildfire smoke blowing in from Washington State is causing smoggy skies in Port Alberni today.
“There are no wildfires in close proximity to us so there’s nothing happening on the Island or the South Coast. The smoke is definitely coming from the fires to the south of us in Washington State,” said Earle Plain, air quality meteorologist with the Ministry of Environment.
Read: Smoke moves in from fires across the border
Plain said they’ve been forecasting where the smoke, that started this morning, is travelling to.
“[Models] did forecast the smoke to go from Washington State to the Lower Mainland, South Island and across the central Island to the Sunshine Coast,” Plain said. “The [smoke] is forecast to be clearing by this evening so it’s hopefully going to be a short lived event.”
Plain added that the smoke is aloft which means it’s above the ground.
“You can see [smoke] but it’s not actually at ground level where it’s impacting us yet,” he said. “We are seeing it come to ground in the Lower Mainland and a little bit towards Gibsons, but I’ve been watching the monitoring sites here on the Island and they’ve all been relatively low in terms of particulate matter.”