While Canadian officials asked other countries for additional help fighting more than 400 blazes nationwide that already have displaced 20,000 people, air quality with what the U.S. rates as hazardous levels of pollution extended into central New York and northeastern Pennsylvania. Massive tongues of unhealthy air extended as far as North Carolina and Indiana, affecting millions of people.

“I can taste the air,” Dr. Ken Strumpf said in a Facebook post from Syracuse, New York, which was enveloped in an amber pall. The smoke, he later said by phone, even made him a bit dizzy.

In Baltimore, Debbie Funk sported a blue surgical mask as she and her husband, Jack Hughes, took their daily walk around Fort McHenry, a national monument overlooking the Patapsco River. The air hung thick over the water, obscuring the horizon as distant ships pushed slowly through the haze.

Canadian officials say this is shaping up to be the nation’s worst wildfire season ever. It started early on drier-than-usual ground and accelerated very quickly, exhausting firefighting resources across the country, fire and environmental officials said.

Smoke from the blazes in various parts of the country has been lapping into the U.S. since last month but intensified with a recent spate of fires in Quebec, where about 100 were considered out of control Wednesday.

“The smoke was insane” Tuesday in Montreal, said resident Zachary Kamel, 36. “I had to close my window because the fresh air just smelled like campfire.”

Quebec Premier François Legault said the province currently has the capacity to fight about 40 fires — and the usual reinforcements from other provinces have been strained by conflagrations in Nova Scotia and elsewhere.

Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre spokesperson Jennifer Kamau said more than 950 firefighters and other personnel have already arrived from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and more will be arriving soon.

In Washington, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden has sent more than 600 firefighters and equipment to Canada. His administration has contacted some U.S. governors and local officials about providing assistance, she said.

The largest town in Northern Quebec — Chibougamau, population about 7,500 — was evacuated Tuesday, and Legault said the roughly 4,000 residents of the northern Cree town Mistissini would likely have to leave Wednesday.

Eastern Quebec got some rain Wednesday, but Montreal-based Environment Canada meteorologist Simon Legault said no significant rain is expected for days in the remote areas of central Quebec where the wildfires are more intense.

U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Zach Taylor said the current weather pattern in the central and eastern U.S. is essentially funneling in the smoke. Some rain should help clear the air somewhat in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic this weekend or early next week, though more thorough relief will come from containing or extinguishing the fires, he noted.

Across the border, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned the public to “prepare for this over the long haul.” New York City Mayor Eric Adams told residents of the United States’ most populous city to limit outdoor activities and parks officials closed beaches as smoke smudged out the skyline.

The Federal Aviation Administration paused some flights bound for LaGuardia Airport and slowed planes to Newark Liberty and Philadelphia because the smoke was limiting visibility. It also contributed to delayed arrivals at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.

The smoke even affected Broadway, where “Killing Eve” star Jodie Comer had difficulty breathing and left the matinee after 10 minutes; the show restarted with an understudy, show publicists said.

Schools in multiple states canceled sports and other outdoor activities, shifting recess inside. Live horse racing was canceled Wednesday and Thursday at Delaware Park in Wilmington. Organizers of Global Running Day, a virtual 5K, advised participants to adjust their plans according to air quality.

New Jersey closed state offices early, and some political demonstrations in spots from Manhattan to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, were moved indoors or postponed. Striking Hollywood writers have pulled off picket lines in the New York metropolitan area.

Sitting in a Brooklyn park with a black face mask on, nanny Meagan Bobb said she was surprised by how bad the air was.

“The little girl was coughing, and I was having problems breathing when I was walking around, so we’re looking to go inside somewhere soon,” Bobb said.

The smoke exacerbated health problems for people such as Vicki Burnett, 67, who has asthma and has had serious bouts with bronchitis.

After taking her dogs out Wednesday morning in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Burnett said, “I came in and started coughing and hopped back into bed.”

Still, she stressed that she’s concerned for Canadians, not just herself.

“It’s unfortunate, and I’m having some problems with it, but there should be help for them,” she said.

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The National Weather Service reports that both excessive heat warnings and heat advisories will remain in effect along California’s coast, while the Bay Area Air Quality Management District has extended its Spare the Air Alert through Tuesday, with air quality deemed “unhealthy”. Meanwhile the state is closing in on a devastating new record, with close to 4m acres now consumed by wildfires this season.

“It’s likely that over the next day or two we will crest the 4m-acre mark. The biggest year before this year was 1.54m,” said Thom Porter, a chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. “We are dwarfing that previous record and we have a lot of season left to go.”

The grey smoky haze coating much of the west – from Portland, Oregon, to Santa Barbara, California, has created hazardous conditions that public health officials are concerned will have an impact even after the smoke clears. Researchers at Stanford University attributed roughly up to 3,000 additional deaths in California to just one month of the wildfire smoke, especially for at-risk or elderly people.

Dr Gina Solomon, a principle investigator for the Public Health Institute in San Francisco, says chronic exposure to the unsafe conditions takes a toll on lung capacity – and can have long term consequences.

“Not only is this happening year after year, but it is happening week after week and month after month, for a significant portion of the year. What this means is it is more likely there will be long-term effects on people’s health,” she says. For children, that means their lung function may fail to increase each year, as it should, and adults will see declining lung capacity at a steeper slope.

“We might have made it to age 80 feeling good and not getting short of breath when climbing a hill – now we may only make it to age 75,” she says. “It is insidious, it is subtle – but it is very worrisome.”

There have already been roughly 8,200 wildfires this year, according to state officials, and they left devastation in their wake. Since August, 31 people have been killed in the fires and nearly 8,000 structures have been destroyed. Roughly 53,000 people across California are currently evacuated.

Officials were prepared for dangerous conditions last weekend but couldn’t stop the spread of two new big blazes: the Glass fire in Sonoma and Napa counties and the Zogg fire in Shasta county, which both erupted Sunday. Collectively, they have consumed more than 116,100 acres, and by Friday were 6% and 46% contained, respectively.

Crews battling the Glass fire, burning through the wine country north of San Francisco, are on high alert as forecasters warn of red flag conditions of extreme fire danger into Saturday morning. Winds up to 30 mph (48 kph) were forecast to push through the hills of Napa and Sonoma counties as the fire threatens more than 28,000 homes and other buildings.

“It’s going to be a big firefight for us over the next 36 hours,” said Billy See, an assistant chief with Cal Fire.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, toured fire-ravaged Napa county on Thursday and said the state was putting “all we have in terms of resources” into firefighting, particularly over the 36 hours of the windy period.

The Glass fire is the fourth major blaze in the region in three years and comes ahead of the third anniversary of 2017 wildfire that killed 22 people.

Newsom said people there have been “torn asunder by wildfires seemingly every single year, this drumbeat, where people are exhausted, concerned, anxious about their fate and their future.”

Numerous studies have linked bigger wildfires in America to the climate crisis. Rising temperatures in the west have created drier conditions that, combined with poor vegetation-management policies and human encroachment into fire-prone areas, driven by the state’s housing crisis, have led to the annual disasters. Scientists predict the worst of this record-breaking season may still be yet to come.

“Our fire season is by no means over,” Alex Hall, the director of the Center for Climate Science at UCLA, told the Guardian, explaining that California is only now entering the part of the season where the dry winds pick up.

Hall is hopeful that the attention on California’s disasters will galvanize a stronger response to the climate crisis.

“Climate change is happening now”, he says. “We have to fix our relationship with our forests. We have to fix our relationship with our natural landscapes. The urgency of that is underscored by this human catastrophe – and it is obvious that time is up.”

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A series of lightning strikes — along with warm temperatures and dry conditions last month — reportedly started a number of the blazes.

One of America’s most popular national parks, Yosemite, was closed Thursday as wildfires continued to scorch the West Coast, filling the air with toxic smoke and prompting evacuations in Southern California, officials said.

The federal government-run air quality monitor, Airnow.gov, showed that pollutant levels in the park were so high that they exceeded the site’s index, CBS reported.

Dangerous air quality is expected in the park, which is spread across nearly 1,200 square miles in the Sierra Nevadas, for the next several days, the National Park Service said. It isn’t clear when Yosemite will reopen.

Two wildfires were burning in or near the park, including the massive Creek Fire to the south. The 244,756-acre blaze ignited this month, trapping dozens of people at a campground in Sierra National Forest and destroying hundreds of homes and other buildings.

The fire was 18 percent contained Thursday.

Rain also carries the risk of flash flooding in areas that have burned, according to the National Weather Service.

To the south, the Bobcat Fire continued to burn across thousands of acres of national forestland in the San Gabriel Mountains, just north of Los Angeles.

While firefighters have so far kept it from damaging a historic observatory in Angeles National Forest, the fire roared overnight toward Juniper Hills, an unincorporated community of about 400 homes in the San Gabriel foothills.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department issued evacuation orders for Juniper Hills and other nearby communities Thursday afternoon.

A record 3.4 million acres have burned in California this year, a staggering number that officials and experts have attributed to climate change and a buildup of dried vegetation. Twenty-five people have died in the state, and 5,400 structures have burned.

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