Strange and foreboding orange skies and a layer of falling ash greeted Bay Area residents as they woke on Wednesday, rubbing their eyes and wondering if they’d awoken on a different planet — and pondering just how long the daylight dimness would last.
In all, the surreal conditions seemed to punctuate an uncanny year beset by a pandemic, social unrest and, most recently, the environmental calamity of the wildfires.
The ominous pallor of the skies, experts said, were a product of the plumes of smoke billowing from the historic number of wildfires burning across the state. Wind conditions overnight pushed smoke into lower elevations, filtering sunlight and producing dark tints of red, orange and gray. Still, air quality remained mostly unchanged.