Why was the moon orange last night in NYC?

NEW YORK -- You may have noticed the moon looked a little different Thursday night in the New York City area. Many people were asking, why was the moon orange or pink?

The moon's reddish color was due to a smoke plume from wildfires burning in Central Canada, according to CBS News New York meteorologist Craig Allen.

Wildfire smoke making skies hazy over NYC

Smoke from the wildfires is traveling down from Quebec, where it was mixed with smoke from fires in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. There are more wildfires burning in the Pacific Northwest, but that smoke is not impacting the Tri-State Area.

As more smoke reaches us, you may also notice the sky is not blue like it was at the beginning of the week. It's now hazy and gray with a yellow or orange tint.

Still, sunrise and sunset have been spectacular since Wednesday, as have moonrise and moonset.

Looking ahead, the smoke plume should continue pushing east and clear the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area over the weekend.

This is nothing like the wildfire smoke we dealt with in 2023 . Luckily, this time the smoke is being carried by upper air winds, so ground level air quality (AQI) isn't that bad.

August super blue moon

Monday's full moon will be a rare occurrence: a super blue moon.

The super blue moon combines a supermoon, which appears 14x larger and 30% brighter than usual, and a blue moon, which is the second full moon in a month.

The full moon in August is also nicknamed the sturgeon moon.

Blue moons occur once every two and a half years.