The San Francisco Bay Area woke up to bright orange skies on September 9th, 2020. Not regular sunrise orange. Other world, movie set, apocalyptic orange.
I took this photo from our bedroom window at 7:32 am. I had just gotten out of the shower and noticed an orange glow coming from our bedroom. To my surprise, it looked like we were suddenly living on Mars.
Aaron and I went up to our roof to take some photos thinking the orange glow would be short lived.
Why was the sky orange? According to SF Gate, smoke from multiple wildfires almost completely blocked the sun’s rays across the Bay Area. The smoke was high up in the atmosphere just sitting over our area.
It was surreal to walk around our roof and look out over San Francisco. This photo was taken at 9:22 am. It should have been much more light than it was. It only got darker and a deeper red as the day went on.
We are working from our living room right now, and people could see the orange glow from the window behind me on video calls. It was by far the craziest thing I have ever seen.
The red skies lasted through the majority of the day. I noticed the deep orange/red fade to more of a yellow between 4 pm and 5 pm.
The smoke was so high in the atmosphere, the air quality wasn’t as bad as it has been in the Bay Area lately.
When we woke up this morning (September 10, 2020) they sky was almost back to normal with a mixture of fog and smoke.
The orange sky was so beautiful, and so sad all at the same time. There are so many fires burning on the West half of the US, and this is what is happening. The smoke is literally blocking the sun. As amazing as it was to look at all day, I hope we don’t see orange skies again any time soon.