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Foreboding Skies over the SF Bay Area
- hatsunearu 6y agoYeah, wore my gas mask for my commute today... Regular masks don't cut it
- derwiki 6y agoDespite it looking apocalyptic, the air quality is still in a relatively safe range
- hatsunearu 6y agoMy lungs were pretty irritated today though
- blendo 6y agoMy first thought upon awakening at 7:30 am was “Has the Sun turned off?”. Three hours later it’s even darker.
- enahs-sf 6y agoStrong 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.
- freewilly1040 6y agoIt's actually worse than the sky in Blade Runner
- e40 6y agoIt was always raining in Blade Runner, too. I wish we would get some rain. That would clear things out nicely.
- mikestew 6y agoRedmond, 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 6y agoBased 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=G17§or=psw&band=GEOCOLOR&length=24 https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...
- mikestew 6y agoBased 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 https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Redmond&state=WA&country=USA
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoWhy 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.
- p1mrx 6y 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 6y agoI was just admiring the dystopian aspect of it.
- mertd 6y agoThe 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 6y agoMy phone camera can't really even capture the effect. The color correction algorithm doesn't think the sky can be this color.
- gwittel 6y agoEven 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 6y agoYeah, my Pixel works hard to correct my photos to look Earth like :)
- blululu 6y agoIf 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.
- saagarjha 6y agoI'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 6y agoYeah, I managed to finally get a good one by including some artificial white lights in the frame.
- 6y ago
- somerandomacc 6y ago1. Orange skies. 2. Extremely expensive housing. 3. Can't go outside. Mars? Nope, San Francisco.
- jdhn 6y agoYou forgot the fourth point, Teslas everywhere.
- baddox 6y agoNow 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.
- victorkab 6y agoThat'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/1303715029779230720?s=21 https://twitter.com/victor_kabdebon/status/13037150297792307...
- ping_pong 6y agoI 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.
- foxyv 6y agoSaw 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 6y agowe 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- trhway 6y agoSun 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 6y agoIt 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...
- aurelius12 6y agoMy tomatoes are unhappy about this development.
- hodgesrm 6y agoIt 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/newsom-no-patience-for-climate-deniers-amid-historic-heat-fires-1316014 https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/09/08/...
- maerF0x0 6y agoideologues 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.
- eweise 6y agowas the same in California 20 years ago. Didn't have fires like this. What's changed?
- nickff 6y ago20 years of accumulating fuel on the ground.
- tylerflick 6y agoMore people, more fire suppression.
- albertop 6y agoIt 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.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoBasically nullifying every air pollution effort for years. Reducing CA wildfire should be environmentalist number 1 priority.
- derwiki 6y agoWouldn't the proactive solution of controlled burns would also pollute the air? Is there another solution?
- cryptonector 6y agoThey would burn less at once, so peak pollution rates would be much much lower.
- derwiki 6y agoAh yes.. flatten the curve.
- cryptonector 6y agoSacramento 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.
- athms 6y agoStop talking about a subject matter you know nothing about.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't do this on HN. If you know more, it would be great to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to or don't have time, that's cool, but please don't cross into personal attack. It only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- scarmig 6y agoWhen 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.
- thursday0987 6y agoi don't have any sympathy for california at all. bad policies over decades has led to this result.
- saagarjha 6y agoHow about sympathy for Californians?
- kmtrowbr 6y agoThe rest of the U.S., munching on almonds and avocados, doesn't see the interconnectedness of it all. There's only one earth. California isn't on Mars. There's not really anyone who isn't affected, or anyplace to go to escape.
- dang 6y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it repeatedly. Maybe you don't owe California better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- floatrock 6y agoNOAA 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=G17§or=psw&band=GEOCOLOR&length=24 https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...
- zwieback 6y agoCorvallis, 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.
- BrianB 6y agoIs it fair to say that the weather patterns are becoming (more) chaotic? In the exponential-sensitivity sense.
- DanBC 6y agoOver two million acres are burning. If you live in the UK, that's all of Dorset and Devon combined, on fire.