As weather forecasters predicted yesterday, the winds have shifted in British Columbia forcing the smoke from the fires in that province to head toward the south coast affecting Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and points southwest. More information about these fires can be found at this image feature published on August 1, 2017. The image feature from August 1 discusses the smoke and haze as well as a recent study by Georgia Tech regarding the dangers of smoke from wildfires.
The residents of the coast will have to contend with the smoke and should avoid it as much as possible. It is interesting to note that the one and only upside to the smoke is the beautiful sunsets it generates. The smoke particles from the fires allow sunlight’s longer wavelength colors like red and orange to get through while blocking the shorter wavelengths of yellow, blue and green. Those longer wavelengths give the sky a red or orange tinted appearance. During sunrise and sunset times when the sun is near the horizon, sunlight has to travel through more of Earth’s atmosphere to get to you and so the additional atmosphere filters out the shorter wavelengths and allows the longer wavelengths to get through, providing reds and oranges most vividly during those times.
NASA’s Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on August 01, 2017 . Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from the BC Wildfire Service.