You should see it here in California!!

Indiana?

Please explain. According to NASA satellite images, the smoke from the fires are blowing west into the Pacific ocean. And where I live in Nebraska, the skies are clear.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/socal_wildfires_oct07.html

indiana is a long way from california. we have had some fantastic sunsets where i live i virginia but im quite sure that the cali fires have nothing to do w it.

You're an idiot.

No argument there. One up-cred for you.

Sunrises in Colorado are usually great. Sunsets, however, are a different story. Because of the mountains, the sun goes down about 30 minutes before it actually goes down. (Meaning it's behind the mountains and well above a straight line horizon.) Because of this, we don't get very many colorful sunsets. Happens sometimes, but it's still pretty rare.

I remember when I was a kid living in South Central L.A. there was a fire in the Angeles National Forest. When I got up to go to school the next day, there were ashes all over everywhere. When I was much older, living in Inglewood, I remember getting on the roof of my parents home and looking through binoculars toward a fire in the Santa Monica mountains. I could see the flames all the way from Inglewood.

There's one thing that I know, Southern California get many fires every year. Period, end of story. And with the overcrowding going on and homes pushing further and further up into the foothills and the chaperral, there will always be homes going up in flames. sad, but true.

....if only, the Forest Service were allowed to go in and clear away the brush and deadwood, so much kindling wouldn't be laying around waiting to start up a conflagration.

....glad the fires are abating. Unfortunately, just like every other year, the fire was the first of the proverbial one-two punch. If the fire didn't claim many of the homes in the foothills, the mudslides may. It's unfortunate, but that's been happening ever since I can remember as a kid living in Southern California. The fires burn away the brush and shrubs, and when winter torrential rains come, there's nothing there to keep the dirt in place, so you get mudslides. And they claim many of the homes the fires missed.

http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2007/11/01/column.hotline.sto

In case the link does not work (one might have to subscribe to the newspaper to see it) I have copied and pasted below the question submitted by the reader and the answer supplied by the newspaper.


From the Bloomington, IN Herald Times newspaper, Nov 1, 2007:

Sunrise, sunset — swiftly flies the ash
QUESTION: Could the beautiful sunset we saw from Bloomington last week have possibly been the product of the fires in California? Would the smoke and ash that was swept out into the Pacific have drifted North, been picked up by the jet stream, carried through Washington state up into Canada, then down through the Midwest?

-R.S., Bloomington

ANSWER: Hotline contacted Melissa Davis, a graduate student in the IU Department of Geography and occasional Hotline meteorology consultant. Davis confirmed that sunsets and sunrises are more brilliant when the atmosphere contains more pollution, especially when the pollution consists of larger particles, such as soot and ash. These pollutants scatter the longer wavelengths (i.e., reds and oranges) more readily, therefore giving us more colorful sunsets.

Davis took a look at the archived upper-air charts from www.weather.unisys.com. It appears that last week’s jet stream could have transported the soot and ash from Southern California to Indiana. Using the recorded jet stream wind speeds to calculate the transport time, it would have taken less than 24 hours for the air to travel from Southern California to Indiana (the atmospheric lifetime of soot and ash particles is approximately three to 10 days). Since the wildfires began on Oct. 20, it is quite possible that they could have emblazoned our sunsets.

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