Posted on 09/10/2021 5:33:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway
September 9, 2020 was a strange day, and Google Street View has the receipts.
The 2020 wildfire season was a catastrophic, record-setting inferno in California. Over 9,000 fires ravaged 4,397,809 acres of the Golden State that year — around 4% of its 100 million acres.
Mid-pandemic, the swirling smoke and deteriorating air quality gave Californians two reasons to wear a mask outside that summer.
By September 9, the smoke from the Bear Fire in Butte County and the August Fire in the northern counties converged on the Bay Area. A marine layer of ocean fog held the smoke in place, creating a thick blanket the sun couldn't break and backlighting the sky a murky tangerine.
It was orange day, or Blade Runner day, or the-day-the-apocalypse-was-trending.
Confused dawn birds continued to chirp until noon, willing the sun to rise through song. Social media was awash with photos of the phenomenon from the Golden Gate Bridge's towers spearing the orange to the cross on Mount Davidson standing in the eerie haze.
But amid the tweets and fearful peeks at the sky, the work day continued. Zookeepers at San Francisco Zoo set the koala pen up with artificial light. Muni drivers kept their lights on all day. Nail salons, forced to work on the street due to coronavirus restrictions, lit their sidewalk workstations with lamps.
And in Redwood City, the Google Street View car went about its business, photographing the streets for Pegman to see.
One Google Maps photo apparently taken that day, on Highway 101 near Redwood City, was recently unearthed by a Reddit user. While it's impossible to confirm what time or even day the photo was taken, the car lights are all on under a swath of orange the exact same hue as seen in the thousands of other photos shared.
orange skies over san francisco, september 9, 2020. Google Street View On the anniversary of that day, there are currently 14 major wildfires burning across the state and a fire weather watch was issued, which could bring a chance of lightning and strong winds to Northern California through Friday. Meanwhile, the Dixie Fire, the second-largest fire in California history, has destroyed more than 1,280 structures, though it is now 59% contained.
It's yet to be seen whether the San Francisco skies will once again go dark.
Oh, last year on Sep 9. I was about to say yesterday didn’t look anything like that in the South Bay.
I remember that day last year. It was weird and creepy, like we were in a SciFi movie. It was a Wednesday and I drove down to Santa Cruz.
Ping
In other parts of CA, closer to these fires, this is a daily image.
Thanks for the ping, Nick. I’m at our Idaho place and the smoke came back a couple days ago. Not as bad as a year ago in the Bay Area. I remember around a year ago driving on San Antonio west toward the mountains and going over the CalTrain bridge. The smoke was so bad you couldn’t see the California Ave intersection just ahead.
This was last year, when there were serious fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Orange man’s fault.
Agreed. El Dorado County is 1.14 million acres. The Caldor fire that’s still burning at about 50% containment is at 220,000 acres.
Thanks to environmentalists and poor or zero forest management this type of devastation will continue.
I understand for 1 year there can’t be any timber salvage / harvest of the burned trees on forest service land for environmental reasons.
Forest needs to be cleaned one way or another. Either by humans, or by fire. Thanks to the enviros, humans are banned from forest management. So the fire is the only option.
I understand for 1 year there can’t be any timber salvage / harvest of the burned trees on forest service land for environmental reasons.
= = =
And burned Wilderness is closed. Too dangerous and WILD, I guess!
Nahhh, they just want enough time for the crispy Sasquatch to become unrecognizable...
Wifey & I had just returned from a week-long evacuation of our home in Scotts Valley.
Gavin’s Follies were cementing my decision to leave CA after 35 years there.
We were all out by April 2021.
https://archive.org/details/78_8220-Orange-colored-sky
Whoda guest??
What a voice.
I coined it. DYSTOPIA.
Photoshop Hillary on a broomstick flying by and you’d have a Halloween pic.
And a dense layer of marine fog held in the smoke of wood fires, gun fire and shitty sidewalks. Just lovely.
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