Why has the sun been red in Waterloo Region lately?

People in the Waterloo Region area may have noticed the sun looked bright red as it hung low in the sky this week.
While the phenomenon offers a fantastic opportunity for photos, the truth is the rouge tinge stems from the wildfires out west.
Blood red sunrises and sunsets are often due to wildfire smoke that has travelled thousands of kilometers. The colour can last for days, depending on the size of the fires.
Smoke from Manitoba and Saskatchewan has been billowing across the country, and is even causing concerns in Europe. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said smoke it making its way across the ocean.
'Several satellites have observed long-range transport across the Atlantic, with smoke reaching as far as Europe. An initial plume at high altitude crossed the Mediterranean region on 18-19 May with reports of the smoke reaching Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. A second, much larger, smoke plume crossed the Atlantic during the last week of May, reaching northwestern parts of Europe on 1 June. Additional plumes are expected to reach the continent in the upcoming days,' the service said in a news release on Tuesday.
Wildfires are also blazing in parts of northwestern Ontario, contributing to the spectacle in Waterloo Region.
FireSmoke Canada, a service that monitors wildfire and smoke, shows the smoke may continue to plague the Greater Toronto Area through to Thursday.

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Expert says Canada's current wildfire season could match country's most destructive year

CBC

an hour ago

Expert says Canada's current wildfire season could match country's most destructive year

One expert says Canada could be set to repeat its record-setting wildfire season from two years ago. The area that wildfires have burned so far this year matches the rate at which fires spread in 2023, said John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, during an interview on CBC Morning Live on Thursday. By the end of 2023, more than 6,000 fires had torched an unprecedented 15 million hectares across Canada. "Just two years ago was the worst fire season in Canadian history by far, and what I'm really sorry to say … is 2025 looks like it's shaping up to be a repeat of 2023," said Valliant. "In terms of hectares burned by this date, we're on pace with 2023 right now." WATCH | Wildfire expert answers your questions on fire prevention, control: Wildfire expert answers your questions on fire prevention, control 17 hours ago Duration 16:38 John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, answers viewer questions on fire prevention, the resources needed to bring wildfires under control and why they're becoming more frequent and intense. Currently, Canada has three times the amount of land area burned from wildfires compared to the 10-year average, according to statistics from Natural Resources Canada. As of May 30, more than 1,400,000 hectares have been burned across Canada due to wildfires this year. Saskatchewan and Manitoba are the two provinces that have seen the most land burned by wildfires this year. As of May 30, Manitoba and Saskatchewan had almost five times and 10 times their average amount of hectares burned by wildfire compared to the 10-year average. June weather is crucial The extreme fire conditions can be attributed to an early heat wave in the eastern Canadian Prairie region, with temperatures hitting as high as 38 C in Manitoba, said Kyle Brittain, an Alberta-based weather specialist, in an interview on Edmonton AM this week. "If we look back through the month of May, it was warmer and drier than average through a huge chunk of the Prairie provinces where most of the bad fire situation has really been focused," Brittain said. "So anytime you have these extreme heat events that just really contributes to the drying of the forest fuels and then it's really hot, dry, windy weather on the day-to-day that can really contribute to these rapid rates of spread in the extreme fire behaviour that we've been seeing." Whether or not Western Canada will see its wildfire situation improve will depend on the amount of rain in June, said Brittain. "It's June, Western Canada's wettest month … If the rains show up, it can tilt the season either way. If they don't show up, we're almost guaranteed to have a pretty bad fire season persisting."