First Alert Weather Update: Wildfire smoke causes more issues Wednesday

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The smoke from wildfires burning in Eastern Canada was noticeable and thicker on Tuesday. In fact, many of you could actually smell it in addition to seeing it in the air. We may see it thin slightly late evening and into the overnight, before potentially becoming even more intense for a period on Wednesday. Air Quality Alerts continue into Wednesday because of this. The main impacts will be felt by the very young, elderly and those with compromised respiratory systems. But, it isn’t a bad idea to keep windows closed and limit outdoor exposure, even if you aren’t in that category. We may see the smoke continue into the end of the week, as the wind direction will tend to carry some of that smoke into our region. Winds will eventually shift from the north to the west and south, which should help to clear our air by late Friday and into the weekend.

As far as weather goes, we need some rain, and we don’t have much in the forecast this week. An area of low pressure spinning to our east will help to produce a few isolated showers Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but not enough to help alleviate our dry spell. Most of Saturday should be dry and a bit milder, before rain chances go up again later Sunday and into Monday. This would be our first appreciable rain since that soaking Saturday during the PGA Championship, which was more than 2 weeks ago. Our pattern becomes a bit more unsettled next week, with another slow moving area of low pressure that will meander through the Great Lakes next week.