NEW YORK (AP) — Heavy, pungent wildfire smoke darkened skies in the U.S. on Thursday from the Great Lakes to parts of the East Coast, reducing visibility and prompting warnings that breathing the air outside could be dangerous.Officials in many cities urged residents to stay inside or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it’s unhealthy for anyone, regardless of health conditions. The smoke is coming from fires that are burning primarily in Canada but also in northern Minnesota. A lingering high pressure system has trapped the smoke close to the ground, said Steven Freitag, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Detroit, where air quality was among the worst in the world for major cities.
A person wearing a mask walks in Times Square as smoke from wildfires blankets the sky, Thursday, July 16, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
“Sure enough, it arrived in force here and it’s really pretty extreme levels,” said Freitag, who noted that visibility in some areas was reduced to a half mile.
“It’s scary,” Omar Mitchell, 50, said as he looked to the sky. He wore a mask while walking to his restaurant in Detroit. “You don’t know necessarily what the side effects may be. That’s days or months later.”Microscopic particles can lodge deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream, leading to heart and lung problems and contributing to other long-term health issues.
