‘Twilight zone sort of haze’ hanging over Charlotte is rare air quality event locally

People reacted with alarm to the stifling haze that prompted Code Orange and Code Red hazardous air alerts across North Carolina beginning Wednesday.

Smoke and harmful particles will cover all of the state for the rest of the week, N.C. Department of Environmental Quality officials said Tuesday.

The haze creates potentially unhealthy conditions for everyone — especially those with asthma, department officials said.

Based on Mecklenburg County statistics, alerts issued this week indicate some of the worst conditions for air quality in the greater Charlotte region over the last decade. It’s only the second time in 10 years conditions have called for a Code Red alert locally.

The last Code Red Air Quality warning on record was in 2016, triggered by forest fires in the North Carolina mountains, WCNC chief meteorologist Brad Panovich said.

At a Wednesday event, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles noted air quality as part of the reason for the sense of urgency surrounding a regional transit tax.

”We’ve got a haze over Charlotte today with an advisory from Canada,” Lyles said. “And think about the number of people that are driving cars around.” The tax, which did not get state backing this year, would fund trains, bike infrastructure and mass transit, potentially reducing emissions and air pollutants.

“People jogging in this”

Charlotte-area residents posted photos of the haze on Twitter and expressed alarm about its potential health effects.

“It’s crazy,” Charlotte resident Mark Darnell posted on Twitter with a picture of the haze in the N.C. mountains.

At 10:29 a.m. Wednesday, a person identified on Twitter as rainbowvegan couldn’t believe people were exercising outdoors.

“Went out and saw people jogging in this,” rainbowvegan posted in reply to a tweet by WCNC weather forecaster Larry Sprinkle about limiting your time outdoors. “You can see the smoke!”

The haze fits with topsy-turvey weather of late, said Sasha Zabelski, a public health PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“So apparently Denver and Charlotte switched weather this summer because Denver is getting catastrophic amounts of rain and Charlotte has an air quality advisory from fires,” Zabelski posted with an upside down smile emoji on Twitter. “I’m convinced the weather is following me from state to state.”

While Charlotte resident Kimberly Rae was on a boat Tuesday, it felt “like it did on the day of the eclipse, a twilight zone sort of haze then we awoke this morning to pollution warning,” she posted on Twitter.

All of North Carolina under Code Orange air quality alert from Canada wildfire smoke 

NWS: Bad air to linger for days

The state’s latest air quality alert was scheduled to remain through Wednesday night, but meteorologist Doug Outlaw of the NWS office in Greer, South Carolina, said he expected the state will extend the alert into Thursday and beyond.

“Considering the large extent of smoke and air-quality deterioration,” rain moving into Iredell and Mecklenburg counties from Virginia Wednesday afternoon “is not going to completely clear the atmosphere” of the hazardous particles, Outlaw told The Charlotte Observer just before 2 p.m. Wednesday.

“So to some extent, it may linger through the rest of week,” Outlaw said.

Staff Writer Genna Contino contributed.