An air quality health advisory was issued for Chenango County due to wildfire smoke from Canada. (Photo by Lilli Iannella)

CHENANGO COUNTY– The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation released an air quality health advisory until midnight on Wednesday for Chenango County, along with 16 other upstate New York counties, according to a National Weather Service (NWS) report.

The advisory was issued on Tuesday shortly before 3 p.m. after forecasted air quality reached over 100 on the air quality index, the report said. The value defines overall air quality to be “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” which Chenango County Fire Coordinator Matthew Beckwith said includes people with breathing difficulties and elderly people.

The report recommended that all individuals, especially those in the “sensitive groups,” consider limiting strenuous outdoor physical activity to reduce the risk of adverse health effects.

Likewise to previous alerts in early June, Beckwith said the advisory was due to smoke carried from wildfires in Canada. He said smoke from the wildfires is flowing up so high in the air that it’s getting caught in the jet stream, following the course of the winds from the north and blowing to the south, and the jet stream is carrying the winds down to the Chenango County area again.

While air quality in Chenango County was currently on the cusp of moderate and unhealthy for sensitive groups as of Wednesday morning, Beckwith said it is hard to tell if the air quality will get worse. He said it depends on how the wind shifts through the jet stream.

“It could shift just like any storm that comes up through– it could shift one way or the other, and next thing you know, it’s coming directly over top of us,” he said. “So, let’s just be mindful.”

According to AirNow, a site run by government agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, air quality in areas in western New York, like Buffalo, and cities to the west, like Cleveland, hit unhealthy and very unhealthy levels.

In early June, air quality levels reached “hazardous,” the highest level on the air quality index scale, and smoky haze and a smell filled the county’s skies for days.

Beckwith said that earlier in the 2000s, the NWS released issue reports like this before, but not to the same extent as the recent reports.

“We’ve had issues like this before, but in urban areas, other parts of the country that have been affected by wildfires,” he said. “These [the fires] are big, pretty good size, there are thousands of acres that are burning.”