• USA and California The American West burns: a cocktail of drought, extreme heat and thunderstorms fuels the fires

  • Russia Lack of means and 'zombie' fires aggravate the wave of fires in Siberia

Smoke from the devastating fires raging across the western United States has reached the other coast of the country. Cities like Philadelphia and New York, located more than 4,500 kilometers away from the Oregon Bootleg fire, have been under a thick layer for days that has drastically reduced air quality. In New York, the index that measures the amount of particles that are harmful to health stood at 157 on Wednesday, well above the recommended level, never above 100.

The Big Apple surpassed Lima and Calcutta as the most polluted city in the world last Tuesday

, a tide of toxic air unleashed by the more than 80 fires that have been shaking a dozen states across the country for weeks. Oregon continues to be the epicenter of the disaster, with a fire, the Bootleg, which has devastated an area of ​​162,000 hectares, twice the size of New York.

More than 2,200 firefighters have been trying to control the fire on the California border for weeks

, with only a third contained. It is still moving south at a speed of almost 7 square kilometers a day and generating its own climate. How? Forming clouds of fire, or pyrocumulus, a phenomenon that occurs when the extreme heat of a fire flames causes the air to rise rapidly, condensing and cooling the moisture from the smoke particles produced by the fire. These clouds essentially become their own thunderstorms and can contain lightning and strong winds.

Evacuations have also not been long in coming in Northern California, where 1,200 firefighters are assigned to the fight against the Tamarack, another major fire that has already crossed the border with Nevada and has forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes.

The fire has burned 108 kilometers of national park.

200 active fires in Canada

The situation is also not favorable in Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Utah, South Dakota, New Mexico and Washington.

In Canada, more than 200 fires are still active in the provinces of Manitoba and Ontario.

And the smoke keeps traveling east.

It is not the first time that the charred forests in the west alter the quality of life on the other side of the country, not just New York and Pennsylvania but Ohio, the Carolinas, Tennessee.

In fact, it is the second year in a row of skies covered by the effects of global warming thousands of miles away, after the 2020 heat waves and drought unleashed another massive catastrophe.

It is a repeated nightmare.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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