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Major wildfires in California created a thick layer of smoke that covered the San Francisco Bay on Wednesday morning, partially blocking the sun’s rays from illuminating the region. The anomalous situation forced to turn on the lights of the cars and those of the offices of the skyscrapers even though it was daylight. In many areas of the bay, in San Francisco and Oakland, the sky remained orange until much of the morning of September 9.
The phenomenon was caused by the smoke generated by the large fires of the fire known as “Bear Fire”, which broke out in recent weeks at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains and caused large clouds of smoke to rise into the atmosphere, which covered the sun across Northern California. In particular, the phenomenon would be due to the large mass of smoke that rises to an altitude of more than 12 thousand meters, in which temperatures are very low and the air is frozen, as explained by meteorologist Craig Shoemaker in New York Times: Unlike normal clouds, those that have covered San Francisco Bay are therefore composed of ash and ice.
The wind then pushed the smoke blanket east and cleared the shoreline, but Shoemaker explained that the same wind in the next few days could bring smoke from the fires to San Francisco that had drifted hundreds of miles over the Pacific Ocean. In recent days. The wind, along with record temperatures, fueled large fires in several other areas of the United States on Wednesday. Gusts of up to 80 km / h have fueled dozens of wildfires in Oregon, a state where extensive fires are rare.
Oregon Governor Kate Brown told a news conference that the fires, which also affected large cities such as Detroit, Blue River, Vida, Phoenix and Talent, could cause the “greatest loss of life and property” in history. . of the State. In Washington state, a one-year-old boy died and his parents were badly burned while trying to escape a fire.
In California alone this year, the large fires that struck it affected more than 800,000 hectares (8,000 square kilometers), an area almost as large as Umbria. The estimate was made by “Cal Fire,” the state’s wildland fire department. The fires were also fueled by high temperatures: On September 6, Los Angeles County measured 49.4 ° C, the highest ever recorded in the county.
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