Foreboding Skies over the SF Bay Area

hodgesrm 5 years ago |

It seems clear that the Western US is going to burn until the fuel is gone in enough places that megafires can't develop easily. It's like ecological herd immunity.

Most affected states are still in the reactive firefighting mode rather than thinking how to get ahead of the curve by removing a century of fuel accumulated from determined fire suppression. There's no question rising temperatures make things worse, but really the bill is just coming due sooner.

CA gov Gavin Newsome's news conference is a good sample of what's currently wrong with our approach. It's what he doesn't say that's interesting.

[1] https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/09/08/...

anonAndOn 5 years ago | |

It's not just fire suppression. We've got a trifecta of drought, bark beetle infestation and fire suppression (aka, tree density).[0] It's the killer combo.

[0]https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/topics/tree_mortality/california/i...

kemiller 5 years ago | | |

This needs more upvotes. I agree that our fire management hasn't been great, but there is more to it than that. Climate change is driving both more fuel and deeper droughts, and making better conditions for bark beetles. There isn't a single answer to this.

hodgesrm 5 years ago | | |

I agree too, despite the strong comment above.

Still, fire suppression is the 800 pound gorilla. We're not just seeing fires in the conifer-dominated Sierra. It's also in the savannah and scrub zones as well. These all burned regular in prehistoric times.

maerF0x0 5 years ago | |

ideologues are able to turn any event into evidence for their perspective. I'm not a climate change denier, I just agree with you that the real issue is humankind's fire suppression.

There are a bunch of things that could be done, but no one is happy to support it. Selective logging, brush clearing, not putting multi-million dollar homes in the forest. etc.

Thrymr 5 years ago | | |

"Selective logging" usually means removing the big, healthy, valuable trees and not the brush and dead wood that provide the fuel, but are not worth the effort to clear financially. It's expensive to do it well.

maerF0x0 5 years ago | | |

Correct, but these kinds of forests will often have their deadwood trees removed as a form of spacing to allow either more quality trees or growth room for existing trees.

eweise 5 years ago | | |

was the same in California 20 years ago. Didn't have fires like this. What's changed?

albertop 5 years ago | | |

It was 20 years less of neglect. Not sure when we have stop doing controlled burns in the name of keeping air quality good. It was more than 20 years ago.

nickff 5 years ago | | |

20 years of accumulating fuel on the ground.

hodgesrm 5 years ago | | |

More fuel and warmer/drier. Snowpack for example has moved up 1000' or more since the 1990s in the middle Sierra Nevada, which means less moisture in the summer.

tylerflick 5 years ago | | |

More people, more fire suppression.

chrisseaton 5 years ago | |

> rather than thinking how to get ahead of the curve by removing a century of fuel accumulated from determined fire suppression

The way to get rid of it is to... burn it. But people don't like it burning, so they won't.

baddox 5 years ago | |

> It's like ecological herd immunity.

I would think the closer analogy to a pandemic would be that it calms down when it kills nearly everyone. But, I suppose that is herd immunity in some sense.

mertd 5 years ago |

The photos in the article are not enhanced for dramatic effect. This is really how it looks like in person.

Hopefully this will finally hit some people hard and we'll reverse the decades of urban sprawl and environmental mismanagement. In all likelihood, it will be forgotten as soon as the blue sky returns.

el_benhameen 5 years ago | |

My phone camera can't really even capture the effect. The color correction algorithm doesn't think the sky can be this color.

saagarjha 5 years ago | | |

I've been capturing pictures through the window that are half indoors, half outdoors. This makes the color correction algorithm stop trying to get rid of the orange.

el_benhameen 5 years ago | | |

Yeah, I managed to finally get a good one by including some artificial white lights in the frame.

blululu 5 years ago | | |

If you use a camera app like Halide, then you can manually turn off the Automatica white balance correction that assumes that this scene lighting is impossible.

megameter 5 years ago | | |

The thing that struck me about it in person is just how dark it is right now. It is just past noon and it looks like evening.

gwittel 5 years ago | | |

Even with an SLR it didn't work right on full auto. I had to manually override the white balance to get it to look right.

BurningFrog 5 years ago | | |

Yeah, my Pixel works hard to correct my photos to look Earth like :)

happytoexplain 5 years ago | |

>environmental mismanagement

As I understand it, half of California is federal land, so it will take two to tango.

pstrateman 5 years ago | | |

Yes, but the limits on controlled burns is entirely NIMBY.

victorkab 5 years ago |

That's the view from my apartment's window. No edit or HDR, just Halide without white calibration.

It actually looks pretty beautiful, Blade Runner style. Unfortunate that it's because of fires though...

https://twitter.com/victor_kabdebon/status/13037150297792307...

ping_pong 5 years ago | |

I also had to use Halide to get a real pic of the skies. The iPhone was too "smart" and would get rid of the color sepia color in the sky.

enahs-sf 5 years ago |

Strong blade runner vibes going on today. It's so odd to see people going about their day as if normal when there is nothing normal about today. Was outside near Lake Merritt and there are people jogging and having coffee. Pure dystopia.

mandelbrotwurst 5 years ago | |

Why should they not being doing that? Would you prefer they just freak out? At least in SF, the marine layer is keeping the smoke above where people are so it's not unsafe to be out.

mikestew 5 years ago | |

Redmond, WA didn't have orange skies (hazy and smokey, but not orange), but with air quality in the "unhealthy whether you're 'sensitive' or not" range and a thin layer of ash on the car, I decided to skip the morning run yesterday. According to TFA, it didn't smell smokey in SF, so perhaps that's why folks were out?

0max 5 years ago | | |

Based on NOAA satellites, the smoke and fires seem to end in Oregon, but I don't doubt that this may extend up to BC in no time. https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...

mikestew 5 years ago | | |

Based on NOAA satellites, the smoke and fires seem to end in Oregon

No, your view window ends in Oregon. I don't know how one is supposed to determine anything about what's going on in Washington state from that link. Here's a more useful link for the doubtful:

https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Redmond&state=WA&country=USA

p1mrx 5 years ago | |

> It's so odd to see people going about their day as if normal when there is nothing normal about today.

What should they be doing instead?

enahs-sf 5 years ago | | |

I was just admiring the dystopian aspect of it.

freewilly1040 5 years ago | |

It's actually worse than the sky in Blade Runner

e40 5 years ago | | |

It was always raining in Blade Runner, too. I wish we would get some rain. That would clear things out nicely.

floatrock 5 years ago |

NOAA satellite 2-hour west coast timelapse animation really gives a sense of the scale of the smoke: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...

somerandomacc 5 years ago |

1. Orange skies.

2. Extremely expensive housing.

3. Can't go outside.

Mars? Nope, San Francisco.

jdhn 5 years ago | |

You forgot the fourth point, Teslas everywhere.

scarmig 5 years ago |

When I woke up this morning, my first thoughts: "Oh, I woke up early... hmm, nope. Huh, I wonder if WW3 started last night."

It makes me long for the fresh air and clear skies of Beijing.

foxyv 5 years ago |

Saw something similar to this in the Inland Empire during the camp fires up at Big Bear. I remember attending a Civil War reenactment at the time and it was raining ash and the smoke was so thick you couldn't see the sun. It was so surreal.

clairity 5 years ago | |

we had a milder version of this kind of pollution in LA for the past few days, although today seems almost back to normal. over the weekend, the orange haziness of the sky was pretty noticeable.

blendo 5 years ago |

My first thought upon awakening at 7:30 am was “Has the Sun turned off?”.

Three hours later it’s even darker.

baddox 5 years ago |

Now at 11am in downtown SF it is much darker than it was early this morning when these pictures were taken. It's disturbing, to say the least.

trhway 5 years ago |

Sun is blocked, and thus the temperature on Peninsula which was predicted to be in 90ies (naturally given no NW wind) yesterday and today is 65F currently at the noon. Basically a nuclear winter preview - the amount of wood burned in the last month near Bay Area (say 20 ton x 800K acres) is like several large nukes. Daily - 20 ton x 10K+ acres - is like a smaller one.

t0mbstone 5 years ago | |

It was like 80 degrees in Phoenix, AZ today... in the middle of summer. That's basically unheard of.

I guess you could say that even giant smoke clouds sometimes have silver linings...

fasteddie31003 5 years ago |

Basically nullifying every air pollution effort for years. Reducing CA wildfire should be environmentalist number 1 priority.

cryptonector 5 years ago | |

Sacramento and Newsome won't be doing anything at all to reduce wildfires, just like Brown before him. No controlled burns. No dead tree removal. No fire breaks. Nothing.

derwiki 5 years ago | |

Wouldn't the proactive solution of controlled burns would also pollute the air? Is there another solution?

cryptonector 5 years ago | | |

They would burn less at once, so peak pollution rates would be much much lower.

derwiki 5 years ago | | |

Ah yes.. flatten the curve.

hatsunearu 5 years ago |

Yeah, wore my gas mask for my commute today... Regular masks don't cut it

derwiki 5 years ago | |

Despite it looking apocalyptic, the air quality is still in a relatively safe range

hatsunearu 5 years ago | | |

My lungs were pretty irritated today though

zwieback 5 years ago |

Corvallis, OR, is one of the worst places right now. Orange skies and ash everywhere. It's working its way indoors and I can see black deposits collecting in my sink.

aurelius12 5 years ago |

My tomatoes are unhappy about this development.

DanBC 5 years ago |

Over two million acres are burning. If you live in the UK, that's all of Dorset and Devon combined, on fire.

BrianB 5 years ago |

Is it fair to say that the weather patterns are becoming (more) chaotic? In the exponential-sensitivity sense.