Air quality concerns continue as Canadian wildfire smoke covers the Northeast

The smoke in major metro areas, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., was expected to cause unhealthy air for all groups.

After a day of orange haze that cast a pall over New York City, obscuring some of the country’s best-known landmarks with smoke from Canadian wildfires, New Yorkers and others were in store for another day of bad air Thursday.

The smoke in major metro areas, including Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., was expected to continue through the day and cause unhealthy air for all groups, the National Weather Service said.

Mayor Eric Adams called the situation unprecedented, with air quality advisories in place for all five boroughs of the city of more than 8 million people.

“Yesterday, New Yorkers saw and smelled something that has never impacted us on this scale before,” he said at a briefing Wednesday. “From the gloom over Yankee Stadium to the smoky haze obscuring our skyline, we could see it, we could smell it and we felt it. And it was alarming and concerning.”