PHOENIX — If you have been venturing out in our extremely hot Arizona weather lately, then you’ve probably noticed a lot of haziness in our sky.
That’s because we have a lot of smoke in our atmosphere from wildfires, this isn’t anything new to Arizona.
We’ve come to expect smoke and haziness during wildfire season, but if you thought it was from the incredible amount of wildfires in California, you’d be mistaken.
This latest round of smoke is from wildfires surrounding the Valley.
In fact, the wildfire smoke from California has been carried northeast to the northern Rockies onto the upper Midwest by the mid-and upper-level winds in the atmosphere.
A large dome of high pressure has been protecting much of Arizona from California’s heavy smoke; however, it has been trapping that smoke from our local wildfires as of lately.
The good news is that forecast models are indicating we will see that concentration of smoke drop dramatically over this weekend.
Something that comes along with that additional haziness in our sky are amazing sunsets.
We will see more intensity to our sunsets, more shades of red, in fact, many times we see a deep red sunset that make for amazing photographs.
So why are our sunsets orange and red? It’s because the sunlight has to travel through more of our atmosphere to reach our eyes when it is on the horizon versus overhead.
As that wave of sunlight energy travels through the atmosphere, that light is scattered by the particles in the air.
When the sun is high in the sky, less of the light is scattered creating a blue sky; however, as that wave of light energy travels through more of the atmosphere towards sunset, most of the light energy is scattered leaving orange and red to reach our eyes.
When the concentration of particles increases due to dust and smoke in the air, more of the orange light energy is scattered leaving those darker shades of red left to give us those intense sunsets.
