Red Sun = Alberta Fire Smoke Overhead

Did you see it last night and this morning?  A very reddish sun, similar to late summer and early fall when we see smoke from forest fires.  I first saw it during sunset last night, then happened to be briefly awake at 6:03am this morning when the sun came over the hill.  My wife mentioned the red color as well.

Check out the early morning visibile image (7:30am):

There is a fairly obvious swath of smoke from Southern British Columbia down into the Central Valley of California…do you see it?

We ran a story about “the worst forest fires ever” in Central Alberta the last few days.  And you can find more information online.  But how did the smoke move south?  Check out the ECMWF 500mb (about 18,000′) map from Tuesday, valid Tuesday night, about 36 hours previous to the smoke appearance overhead:

You can see the cool upper level low over us.  Note how the flow goes north through Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, then part of the flow swings back west into British Columbia, and some swings back south over the West Coast into the upper low again.  Basically you can just follow the lines.  Looking at this map it seems quite likely that some of that smoke was temporarily pulled down into the Pacific Northwest.

Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen