California’s Orange Skies

Today I’m putting aside the travel post I had planned for the week,  to show you what it’s been like in my corner of the world over the last few days. As you might have heard, California is burning. Again! And this time it’s all so orangish, here. So I thought I’d show you California’s orange skies.

Sadly, fires have become an unavoidable part of summer (and fall) in California. Come summer and fires become part of the state news. We hear about the blazes, the evacuations, the damage, and about lives lost. Year over year there seem to be new records in terms of days taken to contain the fire and acreage that’s been affected. Fires seem to have, unfortunately, become a part and parcel of summer on this part of US’s West Coast. (This year Oregon and Washington have also been having some bad fires and smoky skies.)

Last summer when we were on our way to the Pacific Northwest, we were met with thick smoke and a traffic block because of a fire burning beside interstate 5 in Canyonville, OR. A few days later on our way back to CA we saw that the embers were still smoking in the area.

The Fall before last California had had the largest fire yet — in the Paradise area in Butte County. And when we were traveling to Sequoia National Park during Thanksgiving break, we found the air all hazy even 300-odd miles to the south of the fire. Take a look at this picture from Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park. Look at the haze!

As if the covid19 pandemic wasn’t enough, we are now in the middle of fires that have beat the extent of the Paradise fire.

A few weeks back we had some unexpected thunderstorms of the kind CA never sees in the summer, and what ensued was a NUMBER of fires in northern California and parts of the Central Coast. One of those fire complexes (with 2 fires next to each other) was a few miles southwest of where we are. Since then there’s been smoke in the air and an eerie light illuminating our part of the world.

And the sun has been looking like hot ball of fire when it goes down in the evenings, all because of the smoke acting as a filter. California’s Orange Skies might be kind-of-pretty but when you smell the air and think of all that you see and hear in the local news, it takes the prettiness away. 

And last week, you might have heard, the skies San Francisco had turned orange.

And while the sky was orange there, it was a sepia world by the eastern slopes of the Diablo Range. 

Here’s a video from that day:

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