SMOKE FROM MEXICO GETS IN YOUR EYES

It's not like late spring in Southeast Missouri doesn't bring enough weather problems of its own. The humidity levels skyrocket. The heat builds through the day and lingers through the night. Allergy sufferers brace for a siege that will last until cold weather returns this fall.

If it returns, that is. This past winter, the weather pattern was definitely on the mild side, so all those microscopic creatures that wreak havoc in the nasal passages of thousands of Southeast Missouri residents got a free ride.

Blame El Nino, if you want. That Pacific weather system is being blamed for just about everything else that goes wrong.

But now there is another factor, something that is visible in the air, something that can blot out the sun, something that turns a nagging allergy into a nightmare. It is smoke and soot from southern Mexico and Central America, where out-of-control fires have been raging for weeks.

Parts of the southern United States are even worse off that Southeast Missouri -- if you can believe that. In Texas, for example, days go by without a glimpse of the sun because the smoke-induced smog is so thick. Many Texans, particularly those who have respiratory problems, must wear masks when they go outside. Or they have to stay inside where air conditioning provides some relief.

The fires were deliberately set in jungle areas of dense growth. Would-be farmers had hoped to clear a little more land for tilling and grazing. But the fires got out of hand, and millions of acres have gone up in smoke -- smoke that was caught up in the air currents generated by El Nino and was swept over the United States.

It is hard to believe that events thousands of miles away could have such an impact on our daily lives. It is just as difficult to understand those same thousands of miles are traveled by monarch butterflies, one of several species of fauna that migrate back and forth as part of their life cycles. Now biologists are fearful that huge areas of trees favored by the butterflies have been destroyed. The scientists wonder what effect all of this will have on future monarch generations.

Most everyone knows how the world has been made smaller somehow by electronic wizardry and high-speed jet travel. But the world is even a little tinier this spring as Missourians breathe -- and gasp -- air polluted by raging fires in Central America.