Unhealthy Air Quality Envelops NYC as Heat Tests US Grids

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:31)
They're all in on this extreme weather. There's the California heat. PG&E says that power shutoffs are required in California for wildfire risk. There's flash flooding in Texas. There's air quality drops from wildfire smoke drifting in from Canada, extreme heat testing power grids across much of the US on Wednesday, air quality drops from wildfire smoke.
I was just texting with my brother and the summer camp in the area where his wife grew up and where his in-laws live in Northern Minnesota. They're evacuating the camp as a result of wildfire smoke.

**Carol Massar** (1:06)
Well, this is the reality. I was talking to my daughter out in Boston last night, and she said as she was walking home after work, she could feel it in the air, and of course that is making its way and we're feeling it in New York City today and elsewhere. Emily Forgash is tracking all of this for us here. She's Bloomberg News Energy reporter. She joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Emily, good to have you here. I mean, not good to have you here. No, it is great to have you here. But there's so much stuff going on. Tell us about some of the stuff you've been tracking and what's been going on.

**Emily Forgash** (1:35)
Yeah, so the weather power team at Bloomberg is very busy today and yesterday. There are four major things happening.
And one of the biggest ones is the air quality right now in New York and across from the Midwest is really bad and it's only gonna get worse. New York State said tomorrow it's going to get worse.

**Carol Massar** (1:53)
What are these fires that are up in Canada? Because I feel like we hadn't heard anything and then all of a sudden we are hearing.

**Emily Forgash** (1:58)
Exactly. And that's the trend that's happening nowadays because the weather is getting drier and hotter earlier. And so those are prime fire conditions and those are happening not just in Canada but also California is experiencing fire warnings today. A utility in California might shut off power for 10 counties across California. So this is just increasing as weather changes.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:20)
You know, it just seems like we're talking fires and we're going to talk about flash flooding and we'll talk about heat too. But I mean, it seems like this is just a fact of life for the western part of the United States and Canada now. I mean, there's fire season and there's fire season. Truly, it's becoming a time where it's extending so much.
I grew up on the west coast. I grew up in California and we had fires, but it was never like this. I'm just wondering if it has gotten worse in the past 20, 30 years.

**Emily Forgash** (2:56)
Yeah, I think people still associate fires to California.
My family now lives in Southern California too and that's a reality. I think that what's happening in New York today with the air quality, if you remember three years ago when the sky turned bright orange, it's not quite there yet.

**Carol Massar** (3:12)
Yeah.

**Emily Forgash** (3:13)
And so it's not like an everyday occurrence but it could definitely keep getting worse and that's something that New York State pointed out today in a press conference that these weather conditions are just becoming the new normal.

**Carol Massar** (3:24)
All right. So fires up in Canada, fires in California. We're seeing certainly the air quality impacted as it works its way down the East Coast here and across the Midwest. But talk to us about flooding. What's going on there?

**Emily Forgash** (3:37)
Yes. So on Tuesday, yesterday, Texas warned of slow moving storms throughout the state, which could cause flash flooding, especially along rivers. And that's something that was deadly a year ago, almost exactly to the day in Texas. And so the rain did happen overnight. And there's still flash flood warnings throughout Texas. But as of right now, haven't seen the levels at all near where it was last year.

**Carol Massar** (4:05)
It's the extremes, right? This is, this is the thing we talk about with Mark Gongloff, who's a Bloomberg opinion writer, tracks climate science, Eric Rosten over at the Bloomberg Green team, who's talked about that scientists are having troubles even kind of predicting, making predictions, because the extremes that are happening are beyond the models that they were working with.