JANESVILE — Canadian wildfire smoke is drifting across the early days of summer in southern Wisconsin, and it has prompted some local parks and recreation districts and youth sports groups to shut down or modify outdoor activities until the haze clears.
The city of Beloit early on Tuesday afternoon was the first local municipality to scrub city-run rec programs until Thursday, when city officials say they hope that smoke that’s drifted southward from the massive, ongoing wildfires in Quebec will clear.
A National Weather Service meteorologist in Sullivan said there are signs that a change in weather will clear some of the smoke from southern Wisconsin over the next 24 to 48 hours.
But on Tuesday, the weather service’s online radar maps showed a dark cloud hanging over a dozen counties in southern and central Wisconsin. It was not a pocket of rain; it was smoke, National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Collar said.
Janesville Youth Baseball and Softball Association President Doug Madsen said the league canceled all its games Tuesday. He said it was the first time he can remember that baseball and softball games got scrubbed because of air quality.
Madsen said one league official had spoken with a local nurse about the situation, and the league decided to suspend games for Tuesday and monitor conditions early Wednesday before making a decision.
According to the National Weather Service, people with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion or consider avoiding all physical outdoor activities, while others should reduce prolonged, heavy exertion.
In Beloit, the city suspended swim events slated at Krueger Pool for Tuesday and Wednesday and youth play groups at Vernon and Leeson parks for both Wednesday after air quality advisories from the weather service showed the air outside could be “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
Collar said that designation isn’t as critical as in some other areas of the state—including the Milwaukee collar suburbs, where smoke in the air has reached levels considered “hazardous” to people, according to state Department of Natural Resources standards.
The air quality advisory is in effect through noon Thursday, although the DNR said in a statement Tuesday that the most significant impact to air quality will be in the overnight hours into midday Wednesday.
Janesville’s city recreation department has shut down both its Palmer Park wading pool and the Rockport Pool on the west side until Friday, citing air quality concerns, the city said in Twitter post early on Wednesday. The city had also opted to move an outdoor youth camp at Palmer Park to Craig High School for Wednesday, city spokesman Nick Foust said.
He said the air outside City Hall in downtown Janesville looked “eerie” at midday Tuesday as smoke hung like gray fog over the Rock River bluffs on the city’s west side.
A city of Beloit spokeswoman supplied a photo of downtown Beloit captured from an upper-floor window at City Hall on Tuesday afternoon that showed a grayish-brown haze that had rendered church steeples less than a quarter mile in the distance nearly obscured from sight.
One 69 reporter supplied a photo off Highway 14 in Janesville that showed a haze hanging over farm fields that so thick it appeared to be blowing topsoil suspended in the air. The reporter said the air smelled smoky even inside a vehicle with the windows closed.
The haze continued to thicken throughout the day Tuesday. One caller from Milton told a 69 reporter that the air near their home off John Paul Road had a mild odor of “burning tires.”
The smoke phenomenon comes as Canadian wildfires over a massive swath of remote land have continued to blaze for days. The smoke has drifted south on jet streams and now has stalled out in a trough over central and south Wisconsin.
In Janesville on Tuesday, Collar said, it has meant visibility of a mile or less. That’s a common phenomenon in heavily forested, drought-stricken states like California, where wildfires have become more regular, but it’s not normal in Wisconsin.
“It’s all about the airflow,” Collar of the National Weather Service said. “We’ve got 77 active fires right now in the Quebec province. So not only just there, but across much of Canada, there are a number of fires, active fires that are out of control. It’s just kind of priming the pump, just taking this vast quantity of smoke, and it’s being pulled down kind of like when you develop a southerly flow from the Gulf of Mexico.
“So in a way, we’re just kind of tapping that particulate from all the smoke in the environment and pulling it down into our area.”
Collar said the smoke plume that blanketed southern Wisconsin on Tuesday should clear as a new weather pattern, including rain in the forecast, pushes in later this week.
But he said that it might not be the last time this summer that the air becomes choked enough with smoke to prompt public health concerns.
“A long as you’ve got these fires up in Canada, as long as anytime the airflow becomes favorable, you’re just going to continue to tap that smoke until the situation up there (in Canada) gets under control at some point,” Collar said.
This report has been updated to reflect the city of Janesville's decision Wednesday morning to shut the city's wading pool and main swimming pool Wednesday and Thursday because of air quality concerns.
