Vancouver skies blanketed by wildfire smoke

Millions of people in the western Canadian province of British Columbia were under air quality warnings on Monday as hundreds of wildfires filled the skies with smoke and turned the sun orange.
In the cities of Kelowna and Kamloops, the air quality index (AQI) was above 350, a “hazardous” level, real-time air quality information platform IQAir showed. AQI measures major pollutants including particulate matter produced by fires.
In comparison, Lahore in Pakistan was the world’s most polluted major city in 2022 with an average AQI of 97, according to IQAir.
Wildfire smoke is a seasonal occurrence for much of heavily-forested British Columbia, but the number of wildfires and amount of land burned is trending higher as a result of climate change, increasing concerns about the impact on human health.
Forecasting service BlueSky Canada said nearly the entire province was covered by smoke, with the highest concentrations in the southern interior region where fires have forced around 35,000 people to evacuate over the past four days.