Under normal conditions, the province of Alberta uses a 1–10 scale to rate air quality, 10 being the worst. That day, the air quality around Fort McMurray was 38. Without a clock, it was hard to tell what time of day or night it was. By then, smoke from this and other fires had cast a pall across the entire continent—south to the Gulf Coast of Texas, east as far as the Bahamas, and northward all the way to Labrador.
