WASHINGTON (WJLA) — As often is the case this time of year on the East Coast, you would expect a deep blue clear sky behind a crisp fall-like cold front. However, as the front continues to sink south, exiting low clouds have given way to a milky overcast sky. But why?

Believe it or not, that opaqueness in the sky is due to wildfires thousand of miles away. We’ve all heard by now about the devastating fires along the West Coast from California, north to Oregon. Those fires are massive and spew smoke way up into the atmosphere where it gets picked up in the jet stream. Now, the smoke is up above 20-25,000 feet, so don’t expect to smell it. 

 However, up there the jet stream, which steers our weather patterns, will continue to carry the smoke east, around a ridge of high pressure in the plains and right into our region.

With the western wet season still weeks away, and the massive fires continuing to burn out of control, there is not really any way to determine how long the smoke will impact the East Coast. There are models that we can study that predict how the smoke will continue to interact with our weather pattern, and they show periods of high smoke infiltration at times for at least the next week or so.

So, while we have cool high pressure overhead and cool, dry air for the next few days, we can’t count on a crystal-clear blue sky as long as the smoke continues to be ushered our way.