On Thursday morning, smoke hung over Chicago for the third day in a row. The air quality was “Unhealthy” in the third-largest city in the United States, which was joined by Detroit and Washington DC as having the poorest air among major cities on the planet, according to IQAir.com, which tracks pollution.
“The air quality in Chicago has been dreadful, giving me brutal migraines. Feeling better today with my trusty air purifier on full blast. Taking a chill day,” said a Twitter user named Skaar.
The air-quality alerts were triggered by drifting smoke from wildfires burning in Canada, which is wrestling with its worst-ever start to wildfire season.
An area of 8 million hectares, bigger than West Virginia, has already burned. On Wednesday, there were 477 active blazes, about half of which were considered out of control, spread from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts.
While poor air quality was the concern in the Midwest and East, the US South was again dealing with a brutal heat wave that promised to persist throughout the day on Thursday and into the long Fourth of July holiday weekend.
The heat index – which measures how hot it feels due to the combination of humidity and temperature – was expected to climb to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) and in some spots as high as 115 degrees F (46 degrees Celsius). The weather service urged people to seek air-conditioned spaces and drink plenty of water.
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