Brett’s Blog (Colorful Sunsets)

Red Skies at night!  We’ve had a lot of them lately! For instance, Friday evening over KCI.

Look at all the pinks, reds and oranges in this sunset.  What’s causing such colorful sunsets?  The simple answer, the smoke from the wildfires out west.  How can that be? Can the smoke from hundreds of miles of away be impacting us here in KC?  Yes!  But the smoke particles are so high up in the atmosphere and so diluted when they get to KC that we can’t smell it and it’s not having an impact on our air quality.  But it is providing a lot of colorful sunsets.  Check out this photo, also from Friday evening as the sun sets over the Legends and Village West in Wyandotte County.

Typically we see a lot more color at sunrise or sunset because the sun’s rays are passing through more atmosphere than at any other time of the day.  For instance when the sun is 4-degrees above the horizon, sunlight has to pass through 12 times more atmosphere than when the sun is right overhead.  Most of the shorter wavelengths are scattered away by air molecules!  So, air and water molecules, dust and smoke in the atmosphere filter out certain wavelengths leaving our eyes to only see certain colors.

Recently the atmosphere has been so loaded with smoke particles from western wildfires that only the longest red wavelengths have been able to penetrate through the atmosphere.  And when enough orange and yellow wavelengths are scattered out the sun can appear red!

So red skies at night!  We are going to have a lot more of them this Summer, as long as the wildfires keep burning out west!