D.O.P.-T.

[weofodthignen]

The skies have been oddly cloudy in recent days; I hope the strange reduced light is just that (I'm out of practice with cloudy skies after the morning "marine layer" clears) and not smoke from wildfires. So far as I know they are all pretty far away.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

I hate to break it to you, but the pyrocumlous clouds generated means the smoke can spread for thousands of miles once it gets up into the troposphere. So, yeah, smoke from the wildfires is the most likely cause.

[weofodthignen]

I thought the Dixie Fire had stopped pyrocumulating ... and I haven't received any e-mail alerts regarding poor air quality. Just checked the news and I see stories about "Maybe we'll get smoke but we haven't yet", although admittedly they're all about San Francisco. Odd.

[siliconshaman]

Once the smoke is up in the upper atmosphere it can take months to spread out, long after the original fire is out. Also, that doesn't necessarily affect the air quality of the lower layers, there's not a lot of mixing and that's kinda the point.

[weofodthignen]

Ah I see, it's up way high, that makes sense. Could come from Arizona or further afield. Kind of like the ash from Eyjafjallajökull. But am I the only one to whom the light seems peculiar? Hope it's not just my cataracts growing, though that would be a relief environmentally speaking.

[siliconshaman]

Last I saw the of the map, the smoke in the upper atmosphere covered pretty much the entire lower 48 and some of Canada too.

and yeah, people are reporting a change in light quality.