Smoke Particles Screening Sunlight - Saturday, July 15, 2023

Smoke from wild fires returned today obscuring the sky and reducing surface visibility to 5 to 8 miles. The top photo below is looking south at 7:00 p.m. this evening. Clouds and blue sky are visible through the layer of smoke. The second photo is looking west at the setting Sun. More scattered light from the small smoke particles is reaching the ground from that direction so the sky is completely obscured by the smoke. Notice the reddish tint to the sunlight. The is due to the selective scattering of colors in the sunlight away from our field of view. The longer wavelength of red light get through unscathed. The other colors closer to the green, yellow, and blue spectrum are screened out.