A New York State Forest Ranger volunteer died while responding to a wildfire near the New York-New Jersey border that sent smoke drifting across New York City, according to officials.

The US east and west coasts are experiencing November wildfires fuelled by warm weather, dry conditions and high winds.

The smell of acrid smoke spread throughout New York City on Saturday and persisted into the evening, after brush fires broke out on Friday in Brooklyn, the Bronx and nearby New Jersey. It was a surreal experience for a city that is rarely home to wildfires but is in the middle of a drought.

In an unusually dry season for the Northeast, fires were pushing potentially dangerous smoke into New York City.

Timelapse footage captured wildfire smoke drifting across the Hudson River from New Jersey toward New York City on Friday.This footage was captured by Greg Gallent, who filmed it in the Bronx. Gallent told Storyful it shows smoke from the Palisades area of New Jersey,

Forty firefighters responded to a blaze near the LeFrak ice skating rink at about 2:40 p.m. and put out the flames by 3:22 p.m. An earlier fire nearby burned a 2-acre wooded area.

The fire was in an “extremely dense” part of Prospect Park on a hill, and there were no structures nearby to be threatened, an FDNY official said.