How raging wildfires create a hellish red sky
The more smoke particles in the air, the fewer baby blue wavelengths make it through. (Pexels /)If you live in the Bay Area and happen to peek outside your window, it probably looks a bit like the apocalypse: one giant orange haze in place of what used to be blue and cloudy skies. Surprisingly, this creepy side effect of the wildfires rampaging across 2.5 million acres of the US’s western coast has a pretty simple scientific explanation.On a typical day, we can thank gases and particles, including water, in the Earth’s atmosphere for scattering light in all directions. Thanks to its itty bitty wavelengths, blue gets scattered way more than other colors. But when extra smoke particles fill our atmosphere, the sun’s longer visual wavelengths, namely orange and red, have a better chance of making it through the smog to give the sky some color. Once they make their way...