Forest fire photo from Wikimedia

16 July 2026

The wildfire smoke in Pittsburgh today is from wildfires in western Ontario and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota(*).

As of Thursday 16 July at 6:03am, there are 857 fires burning in Canada.

Active wildland fires in Canada, 16 July 2026, 10:03am UTC (map from Canadian Wildland Fire Information System)

NASA’s GeoFire product shows fire hotspots and visible smoke on Monday 13 July.

On the ground it is frightening. My first view of it was this raw footage from a Canadian National Railway (CN) freight train trapped by fire near Armstrong, Ontario. The engineer is on the radio calling for help. WARNING: THIS RAW FOOTAGE CONTAINS AN UNCENSORED WORD.

This 6+ minute CBC News report begins with the CN train and shows evacuations throughout that part of Canada and wildfire smoke in Toronto.

News from The Boundary Waters in Minnesota: 6,000 to 10,000 paddlers have been evacuated.