darn wildfire smoke

I got back home (southern Ontario) from the eclipse in Wyoming and driving across Iowa, Illinois and Michigan under clear skies, could clearly see haze to the north making the sky milky white in an otherwise clear blue sky. So yesterday afternoon, getting home, the sky was turning gradually more white with winds from the north. Last night, despite the hazy brown but otherwise clear sky at sunset, I thought that it would be ideal for viewing a few variable stars. At my home, on a clear moonless night, I can normally see mag 5 stars but last night it took all of my dark adaptation skills to finally see Cassiopeia and I couldn't see anything fainter than second magnitude stars naked eye.
The attached image shows the NOAA-HMS smoke analysis chart for August 23 and the wildfire smoke seems to be very noticeable across northern states and much of Canada.
It was a wasted clear and moonless night! I didn't bother trying because for visual observing, I prefer starhopping and it's normally too aggravating during full moon when it's hard to see beyond mag 3 visually. This would be no problem using a goto mount but my main visual observing scope for variable star observing is not on a goto mount. Anyway I decided that maybe I shouldn't be trying to make visual estimates during conditions of variable extinction, although it might be a reasonable guess that conditions are reasonably steady across the field of view of the eyepiece during a 5-minute visual observation. I will plan to observe brighter stars this evening.
Anyone else's observing plans messed up by the widespread smoke?

Frank