The smoke advisory in effect for both Prince George and Vanderhoof is coming from not only Canada, but other parts of the world.
“The likely candidates are either fires from the Yukon, the fires burning extensively across the Eurasian area all the way from Northern Scandinavia to Siberia and there are also fires burning in both Manitoba and Ontario,” says Air Quality Meteorologist Ralph Adams.
The reason why smoke is traveling from far places is that of the circulation of the Earth.
“The general flow around the Earth, especially in our latitude, is from the southwest to the northeast,” added Adams. But we often get circulations where the air is moving east to west or west to east as it is at the moment. Patterns of wind over the whole Earth are very important to this long-range transport.”
Adams says this isn’t uncommon as something similar happened back in 1998 when a dust storm in Asia managed to travel all the way to BC.