The sky may appear smokey and even orange or red in the coming days, and that is not from all of the barbecues and bonfires.

Sara Hoffman, a Meteorologist with Environment Canada says that haze is the result of roughly 560 wildfires tear through the California countryside. She explains how smoke from so many miles away can affect the conditions here in southeastern Manitoba.

“Forest fire smoke gets pushed quite high in the atmosphere because it is warmer than its surrounding area. Then it is transported in the upper flow, and right now that upper flow is coming from the southwest which means it is directly pulling the smoke into western Canada, and Steinbach in particular.

When the sun rises or sets, she says the diagonally shining light bounces off the smoke particles in such away as to give the sky an unusual hue. Will that make it harder to breathe? Hoffman says probably not.

“Steinbach is pretty far away from these fire sources so when we think about summers past when we had those smokey, low air quality days, I can’t see that in the future just yet.”

She notes the smokey facade itself is fickle and, while it may linger for several days, it may very well disappear momentarily.

“Wind forecasting can be a little bit tricky and then fire forecasting is tricky and then combining them is a very tricky science for sure.”

If that upper flow shifts, the Gaussian blur that lines the skies will vanish without a trace.