While wildfires are raging out of control in many states along America’s west coast, here in Alberta our half dozen fires are currently being held, or close to being held, as of Thursday morning.

However, we've started to see some residual smoke waft in from those fires raging south of the border, making people with breathing problems a little nervous as they look out towards the hazy horizon this week.

While it's currently more of a haze than the smoky skies we saw last summer, Meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada Eric Dykes says it's likely going to get worse before it gets better, as the current pressure system has the wind coming up from the south and southwest.

“We’re probably going to see the worst conditions in most of Alberta, not only Central and southern Alberta, but even hazy skies in northern Alberta probably on Saturday. As this low pressure system starts to cross the Rocky Mountains and we’ve had now a couple of days of this flow pushing the smoke.”

He says while the smoke will stick around the southern part of the province, a weekend weather system should help clear things up.

“Saturday night we’re going to see a chance of showers for many parts of Alberta. The good news is, that by the time we get to early morning on Sunday, the upper-level flow that was southerly that was bringing in all this smoke from down south, is going to turn to flow from the north-west. So winds northwesterly aloft. That will help scatter out all the smoke by Sunday, through until Monday, and looking preliminary into that first half of next week, the flow itself aloft over Alberta looks to be mostly west to east, so a westerly flow… portions of Central and more so southern Alberta, could see some hazy skies into next week as a result.”

Some rain in the forecast for parts of the North West United States might help dampen some of their fires, but Dykes says how much smoke we'll see this fall will depend on which way the winds blowing.

As of publication time, the current Air Quality Health Index for Red Deer and area was sitting at a 2, which is a Low Risk, but Dykes says it’s possible we could get up to 5-6 by Friday, which is in the Moderate Risk category, which could start affecting people with breathing issues.

You can click here to check out the Air Quality Health Index for Red Deer.

For more information on the current wildfires burning in our province, you can click here to go to Status Map at wildfire.alberta.ca.

Here's a link to the United States Wildfire Public Information Map.