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  • Currently in NYC — June 28, 2023: Continued humid with a couple showers around

Currently in NYC — June 28, 2023: Continued humid with a couple showers around

Plus, 'apocalyptic' wildfire smoke returns to the US Midwest.

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Eric Holthaus & Stacy Blundell
June 27, 2023

The weather, currently.

Continued humid with a couple showers around

Ok, you know the drill. Another mostly cloudy day is on tap with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Does it remain humid? Yep. Could there be gusty winds and heavy rain with any storm that hits? Yep. Could you see no rain at all on Wednesday? Yep. It continues to be hit and miss which actually goes right along with the Mets season so far. Don’t even get me started. We climb to 80°F with a light southwest breeze which does nothing to help it feel less stagnant out. Stay cool and have a happy Wednesday!

Bike Forecast:

5 out of 10

What you can do, currently.

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What you need to know, currently.

Smoke-filled skies shrouded the cities of the US Midwest on Tuesday, the latest in a chapter of the months-long public health fallout from the worst wildfires in Canada’s modern history.

At the peak of the smoke, Lake Michigan was invisible from downtown Milwaukee — just one-half mile away. Wisconsin has had more public health warnings for poor air quality in the past 10 weeks than in the past 10 years combined. At one point Tuesday morning, Chicago’s air quality ranked worst in the world.

Adam Mahoney of Chicago’s Capital B writes the effects of this particular part of the climate emergency go beyond physical health: “the visually apocalyptic nature of the recent wildfires, coupled with disruptions in day-to-day life, threaten to create mental health struggles”, particularly for Black folks and marginalized people.

Mahoney spoke with Vickie Mays, a professor at UCLA whose work focuses on racial disparities of physical and mental health. Here’s Mays:

In the Black community, we have to recognize that climate makes health disparities. So we can see this and say, wildfires are a big problem for us. So now we got to worry, and are we prepared? Are we going to be ensuring that those people who need a new mask have gotten them? Is it going to make us want to start addressing the climate disparities because it just reminds us of who’s the most vulnerable?

Vickie Mays

And of course, cities like New Delhi, Kathmandu, and Nairobi are plagued with poor air quality and routinely rank among the worst in the world. The chronic health effects from fossil fuel burning is one of the leading causes of death in the world, killing more than 9 million people every year. That deserves to be front page news every day.