TORONTO - It's not a record, but the first smog warnings of the season made an early appearance this week and experts say there's plenty more in store.
Smog warnings were issued across south, central and parts of eastern Ontario as well as Montreal and the Eastern Townships of Quebec, said Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips. The heavy haze has even reached as far as Halifax, Truro and the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia.
"This won't be the last of it," Phillips said, noting the Fraser Valley also tends to be a bad spot for smog.
"We're calling for a warmer and dryer than normal summer so this is the kind of conditions that would generally produce more bad air days than not."
Phillips said the record was set in 2005 when the first summer smog day occurred April 19. One of the worse smog years in history, that year actually saw its first smog day in February, he said.
Toronto saw some 48 smog days in 2005 compared to about a dozen last year, Phillips said, adding 2007 will likely fall somewhere in between.
With the forecast calling for rain, this first bout of smog is likely to subside soon, he said.
While smog is a year-round problem resulting from pollution, it's much more prominent during the warmer months, he said.
"It's like a SkyDome over the eastern half of the country and what it does is it traps in the pollutants, doesn't circulate them, doesn't disperse them," Phillips said.
"It's like fumigation and we breathe the same air day after day and the air quality gets progressively worse and there's no rain to clean the air, scrub out the air and wash the stuff. So this is why we're seeing this kind of weather."
Children, the elderly and those with heart and breathing problems are urged to limit their time outside on smog days and to ensure they're properly hydrated.
Exercise should be done indoors in an air-conditioned environment.
