Sunsets get intense
Pacific Coast wildfires lead to hazy Ohio skies, more reds, oranges in evening
Smoke and pollution generated by wildfires in California and Oregon are lingering farther east, transforming Ohio’s skies.
“Essentially, the wind has been blowing in just the right direction to carry the smoke from the West Coast to the Ohio Valley,” said Matthew Campbell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio.
Campbell said that while the West Coast experiences orange-hued skies, the dispersed smoke and fine ash particles making their way east have created hazy, milky skies and intense sunsets.
Aaron Wilson, an atmospheric scientist at Ohio State University and a research scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and Ohio State Extension, said that the smoke in the upper atmosphere has filtered the sunlight, causing it to disperse differently.
“All these particles in the atmosphere, they’re reflecting and scattering the light a little bit differently; that actually accentuates those longer wavelengths — the reds and the oranges — which could provide then more vivid sunsets,” Wilson said. “Other light, like blue lights and violets, the shorter wavelengths, get scattered out, so we don’t see those as much.”
Campbell said that the small smoke particles do not affect the Ohio Valley’s air quality because they stay about 25,000 to 30,000 feet up in the upper levels of the atmosphere.
He said the effects of the wildfire smoke reach the east coast and northeastern United States but dissipate along the way.
Rain has the potential of washing the particles out the air, Campbell said, but the smoke will dissipate the most if the winds change direction.
“We don’t really have a clear estimate on when all the smoke will be out of here, but on Thursday we’re having a cold front move through,” he said. “Perhaps after that cold front moves through, we will get enough northerly winds to start clearing some of the smoke out of here.”
Wilson said that a storm is expected out west over the next couple of days, improving the air quality in the west and reducing the smoke over the continent. escottmoran@gannett.com @emmascottmoran