Talk:Smoke from the 2023 Canadian wildfires

Separate article?

@ElijahPepe: Do you really think this should be a standalone article from 2023 Central Canada wildfires? I don't see the problem with covering the impact of those wildfires across the East Coast in that article, even as a lengthy section. Only if the section becomes insanely long is it worth spinning this out as separate, IMO. SnowFire (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I figured this was going to be a sufficiently notable event on its own, à la Orange Skies Day. There is a health impact and separate emergency at play vere. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 19:23, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi! We're having a discussion over at Talk:2023 Canadian wildfires about merging some related pages. We're thinking that it would be better to have a single article for the time being, and split it into multiple articles later on depending on how extensive the page becomes. This page isn't formally part of that discussion yet, but some of the stuff we're discussing might be relevant to this page. :) ForsythiaJo (talk) 19:53, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. The title of the article seems to suggest that the smoke of fires that are happening in Canada are only in the United States??? Honestly, some editors here seem to think the world ends at the US border. 19:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that the title implies that it's only happening in the US, it's just that this article has a narrow scope relating to the smoke in the US specifically as opposed to the smoke in general. Di (they-them) (talk) 20:03, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Why should the scope be limited to the US? Should we have a separate article on the wildfire smoke in Canada?-- Earl Andrew - talk 20:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

We already have 2023 Canadian wildfires, discussion of any smoke related to those fires could be included there. [Edit: I see you already know about this page, apologies for any confusion] ForsythiaJo (talk) 20:31, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

That was not my intention. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 20:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with ForsythiaJo - Notability is a red herring. Of course this is notable, but that doesn't mean it can't be discussed in a larger article. It's a very relevant effect of the Canadian wildfires. SnowFire (talk) 20:01, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

• If this article is just going to be a copy of 2023_Canadian_wildfires#International_effects, then there's really no point in having it be separate. I am strongly inclined to, at minimum, move this to the Draft space as not ready. If that section of the 2023 wildfires article becomes too long, we can always split it off again, but creating this article in the mainspace was premature. (Again, notable event, no contesting that, but there's no been reason articulated to separate it from the cause, the wildfires article.) SnowFire (talk) 20:47, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

  I would support and appreciate that move! Wracking ^talk! 21:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

  Things are moving very quickly and unfortunately I can't keep up because I'm in the hospital. I'll start work on this article in a few hours. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 21:51, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I think having a separate article on the U.S. runs the risk of localizing information about the causes and effects that a larger article -- without respect to political boundaries - could have. I am in favor of merging. - kosboot (talk) 21:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

This article wasn't supposed to cover the U.S. solely. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 22:14, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

It's worth noting that the smoke in some parts of the US (esp. NYC) is also being affected by wildfires in New Jersey, so this is not solely the result of the Canadian wildfires. -- Avocado (talk) 22:49, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I really think this should be a standalone article from 2023 Central Canada wildfires. The massive effect stemming from the cause warrants a separate article. 2601:543:4200:73E0:C16C:7F2C:FF59:397D (talk) 11:14, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Merge?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was merge. Have at it. Combefere ★ Talk 20:11, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

---

In an attempt to distill the discussion, should this article be merged into 2023 Canadian wildfires? Wracking ^talk! 22:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

• Yes. - kosboot (talk) 23:00, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Yes, per SnowFire. It can always be split off again, but this article is currently indistinguishable in content and purpose from 2023_Canadian_wildfires#International_effects. I see Avocado's arguments, but I don't know (yet) if that merits this being its own article. It doesn't seem like the NJ fires had as much impact. Wracking ^talk! 23:03, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, as of right now I think there's a fairly small amount of info here, so merging it would be a good option. And as stated before if it does end up getting too big, we can split it off again. Canaryzzz (talk) 23:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we always have the option to split the article off later. And for practicality/consistency it's easier to have all the info on one page. ForsythiaJo (talk) 23:29, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

No, too soon. This event is underway, we don’t yet know it’s notability. Let’s leave it in tact for now, and we can revisit this again in a week or two.Juneau Mike (talk) 00:12, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

That's exactly why I think it should be moved, though. Right now, we have parallel development happening at both articles, when it should be happening all together. As others have noted, it's definitely a notable event. The question is whether it makes sense to be its own article. Wracking ^talk! 02:54, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

It’s too soon to be discussing this. Yes, both articles are developing. Let them develop. Wikipedia’s servers can handle the load. Later we can revisit this issue. But frankly, right now I believe the smoke issue in the United States is notable in its own right, separate from the fires.Juneau Mike (talk) 11:35, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Oppose — The wildfire smoke is being intensified by a wildfire in New Jersey. It would be improper to combine the two at this time. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 00:32, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - I think the smoke itself is independently notable. It's being covered by news very much seperate from the wildfires themselves. See [1], [2], [3], [4]. Esolo5002 (talk) 00:39, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose this is very notable for the northeast area of how much smoke there is.. and there is a ton of news sources regarding about it.. i think it deserves to be a seperate article

RainbowGalaxyPOC (talk) 00:54, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Oppose, the event is extremely notable in the northeast region, as this rarely happens. HugeAnt (talk) 01:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes - NYMan6 (talk) 02:05, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Merge and discount arguments against that say "it's notable." Of course it's notable. Nobody is proposing deleting this. Just, this article is merely a copy of content that is correctly located elsewhere; that content won't be deleted, it'll be expanded. This article never should have been spun-off in such a stubby state in the first place. SnowFire (talk) 02:30, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

  • Merge -- I agree, it should definitely be merged. As people are saying, the smoke is notable, but I don't think it needs to be a separate page because of that fact alone. The 2023 Canadian wildfires page has a section speaking about international effects, If this page were to Merge with it, then most of the information here will be under the international effects section. I don't see the reason for this page when the existing article already has a section speaking on 99% of the information here. Canaryzzz (talk) 03:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

  Comment - @Canaryzzz the entire article is almost all copied off of the 2023 Canadian wildfires, literally the international effects section and the photos were all copied and pasted onto here. NYMan6 (talk) 10:30, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support or at least rename this article to 2023 Eastern North America wildfire smoke as it was not localized to the US East Coast for obvious reasons.-- Earl Andrew - talk 13:15, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
  • I would support moving this article to 2023 Eastern North America wildfire smoke. – Treetoes023 (talk) 14:25, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose – This topic is more than notable enough to have its own article; per WP:NOTABLE. – Treetoes023 (talk) 14:22, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support There are a number of !votes solely based around the point that the topic meets our notability guidelines -- which is absolutely true! But that's not really what is in question here, what is in question is whether the topic is better suited as part of the broader article on the fires (which doesn't make it not notable!) As of now, the subject is entirely duplicative of the info we already want to be included in the International effects section of the article -- rather than have a diverging fork providing the same information, it would better serve readers to keep together. This can of course change, but I have not yet seen any convincing arguments made about why we should have a duplicative fork about an existing and necessary section of another article.--Yaksar (let's chat) 14:51, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Support merge to 2023 Central Canada wildfires. Per WP:NOPAGE, there are times where it is better to cover a notable topic as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context. This is one such time; there is no need to break this out into its own page when an inclusion in a section on the page about the wildfires would cover this better in the broader context. I do think that upmerging this all to one page on all the wildfires in Canada, however, is a bit too much. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:22, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Much of the smoke is caused by wildfires in New Jersey not the ones in Canada. HugeAnt (talk) 16:57, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

All of the articles I've seen have credited the smoke to Canadian wildfires, so if you have a source for the New Jersey fires contributing substantially I would genuinely like to see it. ForsythiaJo (talk) 17:16, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

After looking into this, it appears that you are in the right. Most of the strongest forest fires in New Jersey were contained a week ago. The vast majority of the smoke is coming from Canada.

[5]https://6abc.com/bass-river-state-forest-wildfire-contained-new-jersey-fire-service/13339038/ HugeAnt (talk) 17:43, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Weak Support Merger – these events are certainly related, and it's too hard for me to decide whether separate or related is best based on context and event substance alone. What pushes me over the edge is the lack of a satisfactory name for the page on wildfire smoke. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 15:57, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Not sure how this makes any sense. The smoke is making its way to the Midwest. The current title may not be relevant based on that. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 17:29, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

@ElijahPepe And that's why a merge needs to be done or the deletion of the page. I would rather put the East Coast events on the Canadian wildfires article and the Midwest events for a article that we can later look at, Thank you. NYMan6 (talk) 18:58, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose -- The two articles have very little overlap, use very different sources, and appeal to different readers--I see very little to gain from a merger of the articles. Rjensen (talk) 17:07, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support a merge as there seems to be nothing to warrant a separate article only concerning the East Coast. Relevant information is already available on the main wildfire article in a much more concise manner. The presence of smoke on the East Coast notability as an event may also be called into question under WP:LASTING and WP:DEPTH. Social media buzz and a reference in a New York Post headline hardly constitute the smoke being "in popular culture" which is the only argument one could really make for this article existing. ~Liance^talk 19:08, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• One article is about fires, forests, very large-scale heroic fire control, with tens of thousands of peoplein rural areas affected and only to a small degree about the smoke. The second article does not deal with forests, fires, or heroic methods to extinguish a fire. Instead it's about public health for tens of million people in major cities one of the 5 or 6 biggest climate-events in a century AND serious fears that it represents a major change in future climate change for the East Coast. Two very different events hundreds of miles apart, albeit with a causal link in that fire caused smoke. Rjensen (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

  Good point, just because the smoke was caused by wildfires in Canada, does not mean it shouldn't have it's own article. HugeAnt (talk) 20:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Strong support - the smoke is a clear and direct product of the wildfires, so keeping the cause and effects together makes sense. —⁠Collin^{t c} 20:31, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Strong Support - Both articles are about the same exact thing. The smoke came from Canada.--Rusf10 (talk) 21:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Strong support These are closely related topics and there is not a need for separate pages, nor for a detailed listing of events by category that were affected. Reywas92^Talk 21:53, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support – As redirect. It'll take some time to merge, but not only are these subjects the same thing (meaning splintering will make coordination and reading more difficult), but the title of this article heavily implies a large series of wildfires on the US East Coast which aren't happening. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 22:53, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support per others. Urban Versis 32^KB ⚡ ^{(talk / contribs)} 23:35, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
• Weak oppose - One article concerns the cause, the wildfires, the others are far more focused on the health and impacts. While merging could be be useful, the increasing size of both articles will likely lead to bloat if merged. -- Epsilon.Prota (talk) 12:07, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
• Wait and See Per WP:EVENTCRIT. The coverage and impact of the aftermath of the fires has been widespread, but the lasting effect is still unknown. There is some precedent though: Air travel disruption after the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption and associated merger voting. There was no consensus, but opposition was stronger. Kstern (talk) 12:50, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
• Wait and see per WP:EVENTCRIT. Hansen Sebastian^Talk 13:26, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose until the end of the event. I would have opposed creating this split in the first place, but now that it has occured we should wait until we know if this ends up deserving it's own article. With on-going occurrences, we should create an article for basic coverage but otherwise retain the status quo until we can make an educated long-term result. Animal lover |666| 14:24, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support I'm puzzled on why there'd be one article for the fire, and another for the smoke. And also why the smoke article would only cover one country - the smoke isn't stopping at the border, and it's just as smoky on one side of the border as the other. We don't have separate articles for Hurricanes that impact places thousands of kilometres apart. Nfitz (talk) 14:48, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

  Support I strongly agree with this, it's almost like having separate articles for a storm and the rain that fell from it, if a storm caused wind damage and the rain caused flooding it still wouldn't mean there should be separate articles for them. DogsRNice (talk) 14:59, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

  Comment – There's undoubtedly precedent for compartmentalizing the impacts of large natural disasters (as an example, Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Effects of Hurricane Katrina in Florida, Effects of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, Effects of Hurricane Katrina in Alabama, Social effects of Hurricane Katrina, Economic effects of Hurricane Katrina, Political effects of Hurricane Katrina). However, in this case, this event would at most warrant an article along the lines of 'Effects of the 2023 Canadian wildfires in the United States', and that would preferably be later when the event is over and a cohesive separate article could be written. I agree that juggling this ongoing event across two articles only serves to confuse readers, make coordination far more difficult, and decrease the overall quality of coverage. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 16:34, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

  Katrina caused over $200 billion in damage, and caused years (decades?) of impacts. This event will end quickly, now that the low that's been pushing all the wind south, is moving off. The smoke cleared and alerts were lifted here in Toronto around mid-day today. I doubt this will be a significant news item in a week or two; and their won't be the continuing coverage. At least from this phase; who knows what the summer holds - the main fire season here normally doesn't kick-off until about now. Nfitz (talk) 20:10, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support - It is absolutely ridiculous to have an article about the smoke separate from the article about the wildfires. The smoke is notable, yes, but only because they are an effect of the fires which are more notable, and as such they belong on the same article. Having two separate articles seems like America-centric bias against simply having an article about Canadian wildfires. RobotGoggles (talk) 21:03, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support merge. I am shocked but not surprised that we are now having to literally explain that no, a fire's smoke does not have notability independent from the fire that caused it. Editors that contribute to current events topics really need to learn to apply the WP:20YEARTEST before creating articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:17, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support merge, per others. Also, there doesn't appear to be an article about the smoke coming from the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season. So why does this one need to be relevant? RPC7778 (talk) 03:01, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support This smoke is not notable independently of the wildfires. 204.107.19.38 (talk) 18:21, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support - This smoke is an effect of the wildfires themselves and has no lasting, standalone notability. As other supporters of a merge have said above, the presence of two articles only confuses readers. – Epicgenius (talk) 13:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Switching to Support - The smoke of a wildfire is not notable enough to get its own article, the wildfire itself is. Hansen Sebastian^Talk 14:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Support: All of the Canadian wildfires are occurring concurrently so it makes sense to merge them all into one article. Rager7 (talk) 02:02, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Did you intend to vote in the proposal to merge all the Canadian wildfire articles? The one you voted for is specifically for the smoke created by the fires, but your reasoning doesn't correspond to the topic. Kstern (talk) 12:28, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I was somehow redirected to this conversation here however. Rager7 (talk) 02:14, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Support- Does a hurricane's rain, wind, and storm surge all need separate articles? I think that would be difficult to navigate. The fires in Canada are quite notable for causing the smoke, but that should be in the article about the fires. A separate article could give the false impression that the smoke and fires are independent of each other. Additionally, as of this moment there is a lot of wildfire smoke in the midwest that is also from Canada. If every region impacted by wildfire smoke were to get its own article, there would be too many articles. AIN515 (talk) 01:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes 2600:1014:A120:392E:E0E5:D033:52A0:D164 (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support I'm not really seeing much lasting impact here and I think this article can be fully compartmentalized within the main wildfire article. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 01:38, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support Changing vote from Wait and see. Little or no lasting significance for this event. Kstern (talk) 12:59, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Switching to Support HugeAnt (talk) 21:45, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support Now that the smoke is over the Midwest, should we now fork a new Midwest smoke page? Time to merge. Jeff Axelrod (talk) 15:49, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

  Ready to merge article btw, Midwest will probably be its own section in the main article 2601:183:4081:FEA0:1E3:448C:A331:4F3 (talk) 01:49, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

No. This subject has its own unique significance and should NOT be merged. 2601:543:4200:73E0:C16C:7F2C:FF59:397D (talk) 11:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Doesn’t have that much notability on its own, actually. It can very easily be told in the story of the wildfire.

71.125.36.50 (talk) 15:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support. The smoke is an effect of the fires, obviously, and ultimately the smoke article is not fleshed out enough to be convincing that it can not be rolled into the main article without significant information being lost. DarkSide830 (talk) 15:51, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Visibility

Having put in the "Shipping" sub-section, it strikes me that the photos should be captioned with the visibility cited by that day's Dense Smoke Advisory. Would this be WP:Synthesis? kencf0618 (talk) 14:01, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Error in timing of worst air quality in NYC

All evidence I saw said that the worst air quality on was on June 7th, but this article notes June 6th. https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-delhi-air-quality-hazardous-worst-ranking-dirty-1805370 https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/07/canadian-wildfire-smoke-nyc-residents-urged-to-stay-inside.html Famartin (talk) 22:19, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Even the sources given say its peaked on the 7th, so I'll just rewrite it I guess.Famartin (talk) 00:46, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

The New York Times initially wrote about the smoke on the night of June 6. It intensified by June 7. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 16:45, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Current title is clunky and inaccurate

Firstly, it would be much more accurate to say "northeast" instead of east coast, given that upstate New York and Pennsylvania were effected much more than the east coast of Florida. Secondly, starting the title with "2023" and ending with "wildfire smoke" isn't grammatically correct because "wildfire smoke" isn't an event, it's an object.

The article should be moved to "2023 northeast United States wildfire smoke pollution" Cro-magnus (talk) 22:33, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

:File:Quebec_Canada_Wildfire_Smoke_Consumes_New_Jersey_and_New_York_City_June_7_2023_-_52958921436.jpg Caption

If I am not mistaken the largest building on the left is the Empire State Building and the New York Life Building to its left is partially out of frame. Wikipedia's wider readership would be more familiar with the former than the latter. Too, this view to the southwest shows very clearly that the the skyscrapers beyond are more and more obscured until they are totally obscured (as are the East River and Brooklyn further back). Although this photo in conjunction with Smoke_from_canadian_wildfires_New_York_June_7_2023.jpg gives a sense of scale, a map would be even more helpful for those who don't know how NYC geography works, what the districts and neighborhoods are, etc. kencf0618 (talk) 18:19, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

ESB is the only one in the left that goes too high to see. The New York Life Building is on the horizon around the top of the vertical stripe building. The New York Life Building is about the furthest visible thing that's kind of famous. It was all over TV commercials in the 2000s decade. This pic was taken from a few feet to the left of the smoke one, a few months or years earlier and a few feet or inches further from sea level, look at how irrelevant the East River is! File:NYC Vesper.jpg Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:59, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know what is meant by "...too high to see". ESB is iconic; NYLB is not. The distance between 30 Rock and EMP is 1.24 miles/1.99 kilometers, which provides a useful metric. Furthermore the East River is germane because you can't see it; 30 Rock and Battery Park are only 5.07 miles/8.16 kilometers apart. I refer you to this panoramic view (hover over EMP): https://www.google.com/maps/place/40%C2%B045'32.0%22N+73%C2%B058'45.0%22W/@40.7552182,-73.9883271,15.54z/data=!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d40.7588889!4d-73.9791667?entry=ttu kencf0618 (talk) 16:16, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Meaning the ESB antenna extends past the top row of pixels. I'd love to mention ESB but I know millions of Anglophones are much less interested in skyscrapers than me so I don't know if mentioning ESB would survive a vote (of a large random sample of en.wikipedia's frequent readers). But fine whatever I'll add it again, if it stays it stays if it doesn't it doesn't. It's important to mention the furthest distinctive-looking visible thing too, not just too far to see. There's visible things further than NYL but they're less well-known than NYL and probably all in a clump of often similar-looking silhouettes overlapping or almost so. Must be hard for laymen to tell apart (I can't even tell WTF some of these things are & I'm drawing measure tool lines from a relatively pinned-down camera location on Google Satellite). NYLB may not be iconic but NYL ads loved to be like they'd show the building looking as old-timey as possible without false advertising (i.e. set near when it opened+became headquarters (12/1928), black & white, utilitarian street horse), then show it at other times like 2000s then so late that crosswalk paint is glowing antigravity forcefields inches above the street or something. The building was an important part of their marketing (we'll stay solvent forever, hence the mentioning being in business since 1845, at least one ad spiraled around the building to make it look taller and I'd joke that an exaggerated parody of that ad would continue the building footage with the viewer getting closer to the tip till we're inches away from a thin, fictional horizontal square mirror about an inch wide that's on top of the real life top. The viewer stops moving. For a few seconds the mirror is a blue sky+small cloud, then a Death Star slides into the reflection, fires at the building+the screen turns white as soon as it hits. When we can see again we expect planet destroyed except a field of small rubble asteroids but the building's completely unharmed! (besides being "on" an airless rubble no bigger than the other asteroids). I already told you it's not 1.2 miles, you're completely incompetent about NYC. Anyone who knows NYC quickly realizes it's <1.235 miles cause 50th Street minus 33rd Street is 17 blocks! Even if the camera was in the middle of 50th Street AND IT WAS COMPLETELY DIAGONAL ESB vertical centerline still wouldn't even be 0.825x1.41422 miles. Does that look completely 45 degrees diagonal to you? Remove the non-ESB pixels and you could hardly tell it's not 0! Even if camera was 4 blocks Manhattan west of ESB center (it's clearly less) that'd still be 4 blocks vs 16.5 blocks: 4⅛ times as much! 4²+1²=17, that 17 has to be 25 to even reach 25% extra distance. Even avenue center to avenue center is under 4 blocks: it's 1020 feet. Minus streets+sidewalks=920 feet, minus ESB's huge offset=710 feet that's less than 3 blocks. You look for the closest visible thing due downtown of camera for max accuracy and it's where the stuff pointing away looks vertical. When you trace orthogonal lines from there to sidewalk (cause Google Satellite roofs don't overlap their ground floors) you find it's only about 365 feet (<1.5 blocks). 365 feet and the block subtraction distance (which honestly can't be more than about 16 blocks) give a moderately overprecise hypotenuse of 0.803 miles: about exactly what you should've estimated after thinking for like 1 second. The East River is fucking irrelevant, you mention the nearest normally findable invisible thing not something up to twice as far away. Especially not when only a microscopic piece is visible on a clear day. The nearest normally visible part of the Hudson River that's no further right than that crown at right edge of the pic is up to half as close as the nearest part of the East River. That would still mislead people that you're looking further right than you are. That you never even mentioned the Hudson and obsessed over the East shows that you should be banned from making NYC geography captions for at least a few years. Look at how far right you can see and how little left you can see for God's sake. That should've been all you needed to know to get you thinking about the Hudson. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:29, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I learn from my errors —even Homer nods. Possibly the best course would be to point out the farthest visible object, original research aside. kencf0618 (talk) 14:05, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Only if an arrow is added or the public could never find it. It'd probably be some obscure thing I don't even know the name of. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:18, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

It's also not 5.07 miles but less than 4.55 miles from the very furthest corner of 30 Rock to the very furthest pier tip of Lower Manhattan, Jesus how many mistakes can you make? The tip of Manhattan is close to where Park Avenue and "minus 40th Street" would be. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:03, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Can we please stop trying to apply original research to images. That caption is too long and most of it should be removed. It's fine to leave it as where it's taken from and leave it at that. Canterbury Tail talk 14:31, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree, we could just trim the caption to "The smoke seen from 30 Rockefeller Plaza". For what it's worth, multiple buildings which are taller than the New York Life Building aren't even mentioned in the caption, including the Bank of America Tower (Manhattan) (center of image, sloped roof), 4 Times Square (slightly to the right of center, H&M sign), The New York Times Building (far right, has a screen and giant antenna that protrudes above the roof), and 35 Hudson Yards (far right, has a sloped roof and a protruding observation deck). The list goes on and on - I can name about half the buildings in this image from memory - but the point is that the caption is naming specific buildings in a manner that seems WP:UNDUE. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:13, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Drawing an arrow at the furthest visible thing and stating its distance is undue? Would seem more like original research if anything. Is it that thing near the thin 7XX foot box at "22.5" and Mad? (I forgot what it's called). Or maybe one of those things around Hudson Yards? I could figure it out with more map work (is the left Diamond District roof hut line clockwise of its hut wall or counterclockwise, line alignments near photo sides to pin down how close camera is to block center, seeing how many known building silhouette widths is the gap to a silhouette I don't know and converting to azimuth to find out which silhouette is which and so on). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:10, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. I meant that naming the NY Life Building and Empire State Building, specifically, is undue because there are taller buildings at the center which aren't mentioned. I didn't mean that the distances are undue, although it's true that these are both OR and undue.

By the way, that 7XX foot box is One Madison. I think that is the farthest thing you can see in this image. – Epicgenius (talk) 20:37, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

If I had to guess without cheating by searching my first guess would've been One Madison Park. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:42, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

How can we use this photo without OR? It was taken from Top of The Rock (I've written the photographer); the ESB is globally iconic. Its feature are just visible, whereas every building visible behind the ESB is basically a grey rectangle. kencf0618 (talk) 00:17, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

We can just remove the distances and say that several skyscrapers including the ESB can be seen through the haze. It isn't OR to say that specific buildings that are identifiable can be seen, since no research is needed to determine that, for example, the building in the center is the Bank of America Tower. However, it is original research to write down the distances or to try to discern a building that doesn't have any identifiable features. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:27, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

And we can't use pixel ruler software to find big angles cause the pic isn't a theodolite and can't be trusted to have a self-consistent number of pixels per azimuth degree. Triangulating big angles was how the first accurate maps of large areas were made though. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:22, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

CREA & AirNow.gov

These measurements were taken by the U.S. government at their Central Park station. My sense is that either the quote box or the graph would be sufficient. I have this graph to upload.

https://portal.energyandcleanair.org/measurements?ct=new%20york_usa.33_1_us&sr=airnow&pl=pm25&start=2023-05-21&end=2023-06-17&avg=1d&cols=1 ~~~ kencf0618 (talk) 17:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Don't have the login to see that, but sounds good to me Alexcs114 :) 17:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I've a more colorful one for you, straight from the U.S. gov. I'm going to dinner with with

some old friends, so I'll let you guys put it up and rearrange things.

A color-coded schematic portion of the NE showing the health hazard levels of the wildfire smoke crisis of 2023-06007

kencf0618 (talk) 21:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Article scope

With the title change, what is the intended scope of this article? There was smoke pollution before June 5 and after June 8, and outside of the Northeastern United States—while the new title is better, it's now misleading, I guess. Wracking ^talk! 16:40, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Can.....

this be placed? - Recently a Air quality alert got placed for the US Heartland area of the US as far south as St.Louis, MO. I'm in the affected area. My sources was the Accu Weather Channel, The Weather Channel. Thanks for the help, even if the answer is NO. 216.247.72.142 (talk) 03:44, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to one of the sources you refer to? Thanks! Wracking ^talk! 04:06, 6 July 2023 (UTC)