How Canadian Wildfires Could Affect West Michigan’s Air Quality

There's nothing worse than walking outside during our beautiful warm, summer months to see a thick smokey haze settling over the area. You may remember last summer when the Canadian wildfires brought several air advisories to West Michigan.

The forest fires are already bad enough for the places where they're happening, but when they travel here via weather patterns and wind they ruin our view, sometimes smell, and overall it's not fun to have to worry about how long it's going to stick around so you can limit your exposure.

Just like Summmer 2023, Meteorlogists are warning that West Michigan will see more smokey skies thanks to several forest fires burning to the north and west of us. Experts say that four US states will have air advisory warnings, but thankfully Michigan isn't currently on that list.

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Canada currently has 146 active fires burning, including over a dozen that are considered to be "out of control" fires. You can see them on the map below:

When will wildfire smoke be arriving in Michigan, and how long will it stay?

Smoke from the Canadian forest fires should start rolling in this morning (May 14) and continue to roll in through tomorrow (May 15) morning.

Currently there is no air advisory warnings in effect for West Michigan, but that doesn't mean we couldn't see some later in the spring and summer seasons if these fires continue to burn without being contained or controlled.

If you want to keep track of clean air alerts and how this smoke develops over the next few months, you best source of up to date information for our area is the West Michigan Clean Air Colation website.