September 9, 2020

I was very confused when my alarm went off this morning. It is still so dark outside, I thought... No, wait! It's orange outside!

In the Bay Area today, we're experiencing an unusual meteorological phenomenon. The wildfires throughout California are now quite far from us. The winds are still blowing the smoke here, but it is higher up in the sky than it has been in the past few weeks. Smoke is sort of like dust , perfectly described by this news article as if "someone took a leaf blower and blew [a pile of dust] up into the air."

The visible light that has longer wavelengths (reds and oranges) are able to make it through the dust, while light that has shorter wavelengths (blues and violet) get filtered out by the dust. Without the shorter wavelength light reaching us, the sky appears orange.

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