Much of South Florida’s metro area was blanketed by a combination of smog and haze on Monday, the National Weather Service said.
The smog was the result of a temperature inversion in the atmosphere, trapping air pollution near the ground. The haze likely was created by a sugarcane burn in Palm Beach County, authorities said.
Meanwhile, a low-level deck of clouds, already covering much of the eastern half of the state as far north as Jacksonville, is slowly drifting over Palm Beach County - and could reach Broward by Tuesday, the weather service said.
The clouds are the result of cool air from the north interacting with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, meteorologist Brad Diehl said.
“Similar conditions will likely continue Tuesday and possibly into Wednesday,” he said.
In meteorological terms, the clouds are classified as the stratus variety, known for being flat and calm, not puffy rain producers.
“There’s barely even a light shower in all that stuff, and that’s a large cloud bank,” Diehl said.
The root cause of both the clouds and the smog is a low-pressure system about 240 miles east of Cape Canaveral, pulling cooler air from the north over the state Diehl said.
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