Residents of the D.C. metropolitan area woke to gray skies with an orange sun Tuesday, thanks to haze from eastern Canada wildfires as well as a burning landfill in Lorton, Virginia.
The air quality did not drop enough to trigger a National Weather Service alert, but the agency warned that, as smoke from the Canadian fires continued to blow south, the skies would remain hazy through midweek.
Exacerbating the haze in the D.C. area was a fire at the Rainwater Landfill in Lorton.
The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department responded to the scene at about 11 p.m. Monday. Almost seven hours later, the blaze had been contained but smoke was still visible in the area.
Around 11pm #FCFRD units responded to a landfill in the 9900 blk of Richmond Hwy in Lorton for reports of an outside fire. Crews are actively working to get the large volume fire under control & will be on scene for an extended period of time. Smoke is visible from Rte 1 & I-95. pic.twitter.com/d9sLBnKfuC
— Fairfax County Fire/Rescue (@ffxfirerescue) June 6, 2023
The fire department noted that the large amounts of logs and brush inside the landfill helped produce the prodigious plumes of smoke that further grayed out the sky well into Tuesday. No one was injured in the Lorton fire.
The investigation into what sparked the landfill blaze is still ongoing.
In Canada, the forest fires have most affected the province of Quebec, in which more than 150 fires were active as of Monday. Those conflagrations have consumed 600 square miles of land and forced the evacuation of about 14,000 people, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.
In an average year, only about a single square mile of Quebecois forest would have been burnt out by June 5.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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