New York City Smells Like Smoke Because Of New Jersey

The Empire State Building and the rest of the Manhattan skyline seen from Rockafeller Center in New York, USA, 05 March 2014. Photo by: Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
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Large numbers of New Yorkers woke up to the smell of smoke on Monday, the result of a brush fire in Wharton State Forest in New Jersey.

New York City’s official emergency notification system sent out an alert on Twitter about the issue at 12:42 a.m. Monday.


According to The New York Times, the state forest is about 90 miles south of the city, and the smoke from the fire was trapped “in a weather system that kept it from dispersing into the atmosphere.”

Tim Morrin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, told the newspaper the smell should be gone by the afternoon. The fire, which occurred in a remote area of the state park, had spread through 1,500 acres by Monday morning, and was 50 percent contained. The cause of the blaze was not yet clear to officials.

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