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Why You Can See the Sun Today, and Why It’s a Good Thing
If you live in in the Bay Area or elsewhere along the California coast, you were probably as pleased as I was to see the sun Saturday morning. The satellite imagery available from ZOOM Earth can help you see what’s going on over-head and how weather and climate impact these historic wildfires. For this post I’ve made some of them into animated GIFs, for easier viewing.
On September 7, 2020, plumes of smoke are visible from major wildfires in northern California and north-east Washington state. While prevailing winds carry the California smoke south-east, smoke from Washington blows south by south-west. Smoke in San Francisco was not too bad Monday, as we benefited from clean ocean air.
By September 8 the smoke situation was notably worse in the Bay Area, with north winds carrying smoke from August and North Complex Fires into the Bay Area. While fires in Washington cooled on the 8th, the Oregon fires took off, with dry easterly winds feeding the fire and creating a huge smoke cloud over the ocean, where prevailing winds carried it south towards California.
