You might have noticed a little bit of a different tinge in the colour of the sky today in the southeast and wondered where it came from. According to Environment Canada, you have wildfires in several other places to thank for that. 

Hot, dry conditions have sparked a dangerous wildfire season in several parts of North America, notably in California and British Columbia. Prevailing winds and air currents have helped carry some of the smoke from those fires across the southern part of the prairies. 

"That smoke is being picked up and transported to the west in the upper flow," said Environment Canada's Sara Hoffman. "It's bringing those very slight hazy conditions to southern Alberta and parts of southern Saskatchewan."

The wildfires don't appear to be going out anytime soon in either California or British Columbia, where the city of Penticton has been directly threatened. But whether or not the smoke will linger in the air in Estevan is literally up in the air. After all, smoke can be difficult to predict.  

"Smoke is a difficult thing to say for certain," Hoffman said. "What I can say for certain is the longer there are fires burning, for the next little while, that smoke does have the potential to be transported as far east as Estevan and even into Manitoba. At this point in time we're expecting that smoke to stay aloft and be that haze, that film that we're seeing right now in the upper atmosphere."

According to Hoffman, you're most likely to notice this film or haze first thing in the morning or late at night, because the smoke particles catch the light when the sun comes in on an angle. The west-to-east flow means fires on the west coast could keep sending their smoke our way. 

"Before we had a really warm air mass over the prairies," she said. "We had some unseasonably high temperatures for the last little while, which was bringing air from the south to the north. Now that's flattening out, and by Wednesday we'll have more of that transport from the west across the prairies."

Hoffman added that Environment Canada would issue a special air quality statement along with Sask Health if things got dramatically worse. They examine the particles that come through in the smoke. They still believe the air quality will be good for the foreseeable future.