Tuesday, June 06, 2023

Forest Fires and Lights

I was driving north or at least north-ish. When I looked in the rearview mirror, it seemed as though the car behind me had a light on inside: not the main light, but something near the dashboard. How odd!

I cast my eyes to the car behind him and noticed the same thing. Well, two cars wouldn't be driving with interior lights on, so there must be an alternative explanation.

Once we had completed our errand we turned back the way we came, and we saw that many approaching cars were exhibiting a similar effect.


It has to have something to do with the forest fires, but I don't know how the physics works. There are fires relatively close to us, and the atmosphere is very hazy. It's hazy enough that we can't see the sun, so I don't know what could have caused that lighting effect, particularly since it was occurring to traffic travelling north-ish.

We pulled off onto a sideroad to get a bit of a landscape view of the hazy conditions. I know that it just looks like an overcast day, but it is all due to the fires.



We saw more of this weird lighting effect on the rest of the journey, but being a bit of a dullard, I can't begin to explain the phenomenon.






21 comments:

  1. This morning in the city the skies are very strange indeed.

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  2. We have an orange sun this morning, smoke haze from a combination of south Jersey and Nova Scotia fires.

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  3. Haze from the fires has caused it, by the looks of it. Spooky, though.

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  4. Smoke from NS supposed to be down our way too. Where are the fires close to you?

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  5. I was mistaken. Smoke from Ontario is what we are seeing not Nova Scotia.

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  6. The sun is actually showing here today unlike yesterday.

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  7. You Canadians need to get your act together and do a rain dance or whatever it takes to wet things. For a couple weeks, we got smoke from Ontario and now thanks to the reverse winds, we got hammered yesterday with this smoke from Nova Scotia and it is supposed to last through today too.

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  8. All of Canada needs the soaking we have gotten the last three days and into the rest of the week.

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  9. It's very early for the wildfires and that's disturbing. I'm expecting a bad summer of them since it's been so dry here. Air quality is a huge issue. :(

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  10. The sun has really been orange lately. It's the diffusion of light through the particles. Very weird.

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  11. I will never grow accustomed to the wildfires, the smoke, and the strange orange glow from the sky here in Alberta quite often these days.

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  12. We also have had smoke and haze here in Nashua, NH, and it can be as annoying as the Canada Goose population. Hope it clears up for all that the fires are extinguished.

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  13. So far no smoke or fires.
    Stay safe.
    Coffee is on, and stay safe.

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  14. MIneapolis cannot be seen today be today ray troutbirder

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  15. I cannot explain this.

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  16. It happened to me when I drove through grass fire haze last year. Light gets bent through varying humes density

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  17. It is a hazy day here. We can smell the smoke from the fires. I can only imagine how awful your air is up there. I hope you are wearing masks again.

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  18. Maybe reflected sun through the haze, condensed by the curve of the windshield.
    We could see the smoke blowing yesterday afternoon down around Smiths Falls area. Not so thick up here, but ...
    Oh, [censored]!!!

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  19. Wow -- that's a mystery.

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  20. The world makes a strange appearances when the wildfire smoke comes. It hits here usually after the beginning of July and is unrelenting until after the beginning of September.

    We are in SE Washington State. We do get some smoke from Canada but usually it is home grown. One year it got so close to town that our little Community College had over 1000 firefighters camped on the campus. Scary stuff. Long lines of locals bringing those guys pizza, home baked goodies, cases of water, we were so grateful. The local restaurants brought in food as well.

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  21. We also got some haze from the fires up there. I feel so sorry for those who live close. Scary!

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