Orange skies and burning eyes as smoke envelops New York City

The smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles north that turned New York into a scene of unsettling gloom on Wednesday, billowing as if from a burning building blocks away, draped the city in a thick and otherworldly hue of orange-gray.

The acrid smell of a campfire hung in the air. No fog, no fog, no weather at all – this was something new to even seasoned New Yorkers.

Car headlights flashed at noon as drivers struggled to see. Streetlights turned on automatically. Busy summer sidewalks, their afternoon shadows fading, gradually became empty. A woman exiting a supermarket stopped and pointed her phone’s camera at the obliterated sky.

Mayor Eric Adams, at a news conference, gave voice to the way many New Yorkers probably felt when they stepped out: “What the hell is this?”

City leaders urged caution and to avoid the outdoors, and the response was swift. Yellow tape, more famous at crime scenes, stretched across the entrances to playgrounds. School recesses remained empty and parents were urged to pick up their children quickly to avoid waiting in the thick fog.

The daily bustle in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park Chinatown was absent on Wednesday. “Not good,” said Gigi Chen, who sold live crabs — three for $25 — from a stall outside Blue Ocean Market. “Afternoons are busy here,” she said. “Not today.” As she spoke, a man pushing a cart of clean and folded laundry hurried past, as if trying to avoid the smell.

The smoke and dip in air quality revived scenes familiar from the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, and with it a sense of helplessness against forces beyond our control. Masks returned to faces. Residents checked their screens for new data before heading out – Covid infection rates then, AirNow.gov now.

The needle on the site’s air quality index rose gradually for New York City, moving from the “Unhealthy” category to “Very Unhealthy” to, finally, “Hazardous.” Elsewhere in the state, the index was even higher.

Commuters flipped their pandemic precautions, donning masks as they approach a subway station and taking them off before boarding. A small consolation: smoke is not contagious.

And another, that this should pass relatively quickly, with fresh air and the possibility of rain expected as the week progresses.

But with the still thick smoke, there were many unknown sights. Several of the popular Central Park Tennis Center courts were vacant after players canceled their reservations. Gray smoke screens cast a ghostly veil over Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

On Broadway, the play “Prima Facie” was interrupted 10 minutes into the performance when the star, Jodie Comer, had trouble breathing and was escorted off stage.

Outside in Times Square, the scene was more or less normal, with tourists coming and going – though everyone seemed to be talking about the same thing. Rishabh Mehta, 27, who visited the city with his wife and his parents from India, expressed disappointment at the turn of events.

“We can’t see the buildings when we go on top of the observatories,” he said. “It’s suffocating. We cannot walk long distances. If we keep walking long distances, we get tired early.”

Nearby, Rauf Rahimov, 27, a pedicab driver outside Central Park, leaned back in his cab where the passengers would sit, if there were any.

“No tourists, no people, no income,” he said. He had made about $65 so far Wednesday, less than half of a normal day. In Brooklyn, a food delivery boy, Mohammad Uddin, said he grew up in Bangladesh, a country with persistently unhealthy air quality. But he said nothing there compared to Wednesday in Brooklyn – “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.”

Students gasped as they left the Fordham University campus in Manhattan. One instructor said, “Smell that barbecue, man!”

In the Bronx, Jeremiah Ducille, 20, in slacks and a tie stood next to a table advertising cell phones. He normally dislikes the hot sun and humid temperatures, and sought solace in the darkening sky above.

“Now that the smoke is gone, it covers the sun,” he said. “It’s a little better this way.”

But on a bus traveling down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, passengers could barely make out Central Park a few feet outside the window. Gone was the line of horse-drawn carriages outside the entrance to a park another city ruled Wednesday.

“It’s like the smoke has settled, there’s no breeze,” said Dani Harkin, 54, on the bus. The eerie scenes outside her window reminded her of a very specific day.

“Last night we didn’t really know, but it smelled — it smelled like 9/11,” she said. “Like, ‘That’s fire.’ It smelled like the day. I won’t forget that smell.”

Remy Hernandez, 40, a food delivery boy from the Bronx, saw the day through an equally gloomy lens. “To me it seems like the world is ending,” he said.

Uptown, a young child riding a scooter to school, asked his father, “Why is it so foggy outside?”

Olivia Bensimon, Emma Fitzsimmons, Sean Piccoli And Michael D Regan reporting contributed.