Fires in the United States: the plume of fires flies over ... Paris

Guillaume Séchet spends his days analyzing the smallest nuances of the sky.

But by observing this Friday afternoon the "pale white" color which enveloped Paris and part of northern France, the meteorologist understood that it was not just a whim of the weather.

But the consequences of the monster fires ravaging the American West.

"If you look at the fire smoke simulation map, you can see very clearly that the compact plume of smoke rising over the American West was carried by upward air currents," crossed the Atlantic and reached part of France and Great Britain ”explains the forecaster, a specialist in extreme weather events.

#CaliforniaFires #smoke #France If the sky is not perfectly blue north of the Loire, it is because the smoke from the fires that are raging in the west of the USA are picked up in the zonal current and also fly over our regions !

Smoke map between the USA and Europe pic.twitter.com/seSMGizAn7

- Guillaume Séchet (@Meteovilles) September 11, 2020

"The same process that occurs when we find sand from the Sahara on our cars"

The images of San Francisco plunged into an almost apocalyptic red sky already gave an idea of ​​the magnitude of these fires and of the smoke emanating from them.

In northwestern California, the fire dubbed "August Complex Fire", an assembly of 37 fires that affected the Mendocino Forest from August 17, officially became the largest in history in this state on Thursday. , with more than 190,000 hectares reduced to ashes.

The fires spread from Washington State in the north, bordering Canada, to San Diego in the south, on the Mexican border, fueled by chronic drought and strong winds.

San Francisco plunged under a red sky because of the fires

How can these ash particles, suspended in the atmosphere, cross the Atlantic?

"They are transported to us by strong and regular high altitude currents coming from the west," explains Guillaume Séchet.

It's pretty much the same process that happens when we find Sahara sand deposited on the hood of our cars.

"

When Australia was ravaged a few months ago by bushfires of unprecedented magnitude, researchers from the American space center at NASA were categorical: the fumes from the fires had ended up circling the entire planet. planet.

Soot deposits had even been spotted as far as South America, in Chile.