Wild Weather

The Canadian wildfire smoke spread into the U.S. over the summer causing at least 12 states to have air quality alerts. Around 70 million people had poor visibility including the residents of Chicago, Detroit, New York, St. Louis and Cleveland along with many more in other states. All of this smoke had come from 400 fires, most of which had been started by lightning from dry thunderstorms. A dry thunderstorm produces very little rain making the fires continue to burn.  During this year alone around 24 million acres of land in Canada has burned, that is roughly the size of Indiana. 

In Hawaii there have also been wildfires, 106 people have died there as of Wednesday, August 16. More than 2,200 buildings have been destroyed or damaged, most of them being residential. The island Lahaina has been completely burnt into ashes, it has been the deadliest fire in over 100 years according to US Fire Administration and CNN analysis. Hawaiian Electric is facing a lawsuit because power lines that blew over are the suspected cause of the Lahaini wildfire, but the cause has yet to be determined. 

According to The Guardian, "A new study, published by the department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, for the first time links extreme hail, dangerous deluges, and the growing risk of flash floods in the central United States."  Over the summer, tornadoes and hail damaged many places in Indiana. On June 25th, many parts of Indiana got hit with a destructive storm, including hail damage and in some spots tornado damage. In Paoli, they had an EF-1 blow through and it had maximum winds of 100 mph. Indiana has had at least 33 tornadoes in 2023, with the highest record of tornadoes in a year for Indiana being set in 2011 with 72. This doesn’t seem like much compared to the 107 tornadoes Illinois has had this year alone.