File:Smoke from Canadian wildfires over the Mid-Atlantic (MODIS 2015-06-19).jpg

English: Residents of the U.S. Midwest and eastern states might have noticed that the Sun appeared to have a slightly different hue in early June 2015. It was not the result of an active imagination. Smoke from wildfires in Canada cast a hazy mask over the atmosphere that gave the Sun a deeper orange-red color.

Smoke from fires burning in Alberta, Canada, was seen on June 7 over Canada�s Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces, then entered the United States over Minnesota on June 8, and then moved over the Midwest on June 9. By June 10, the nation�s capital, as well as several other states, lay under a broad veil of smoke.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA�s Terra satellite captured this true-color image of the westward-moving smoke plume as it passed over Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Delaware on June 10, 2015. Smoke also hangs over Pennsylvania and New York. The smoke plume also pours out over the Atlantic Ocean.

The June 2015 plume was at an altitude of about 2 to 5 kilometers (7,000 to 16,000 feet). That is high enough that it could mean reduced visibility and deteriorated conditions for some aircraft pilots.