The sky has been smoky for the past 4 days (since Sunday Morning) because of several forest fires, ALL of which were human-caused. Dammit, people, when the grass and the bush is tinder-dry, and fire-risk danger level is PAST extreme, you do NOT take a walk through them SMOKING, and then ditch your cigarette butt into them!
The fires are far away enough that this house isn't in danger of burning down, and the smoke has been up fairly high, though at its worst the air totally reeked of smoke. I swear you could have hung up fillets of salmon and smoked them right outside.
I remember one year it got this dry, but there was not even this amount of smoke in the air from distant forest fires, and maybe only for 2 days, and they said we should not go into the back forest behind our house, so I didn't.