‘Orange Skies Day’ remembered 4 years later: Photos

SAN FRANCISCO ( KRON ) — Monday marks four years to the day since Bay Area skies turned an ominous shade of orange. It was Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020 when smoke from wildfires turned the sky over San Francisco and much of the surrounding region an eerie, glowing orange.

The event came just six months into the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and not long after the nationwide reaction to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. At the time, it led some people to wonder just what 2020 had in store for us next and drew comparisons to the planet Mars .

In fact, reddish, sometimes orange, skies are not uncommon when wildfires are burning. At the time, KRON4 Meteorologist Lawrence Karnow explained that offshore winds from the northeast blew smoke from fires in Northern California — the Bear Fire near Paradise and the August Complex Fires in Mendocino County.

Smoke from those fires, Karnow explained, blew in overnight, causing the Bay Area to wake up to a thick layer of smoke that prevented sunshine from getting through. That phenomenon resulted in the eerie, almost apocalyptic orange skies seen around the region that day.

The ominous skies eventually cleared. However, it took nearly a week for Bay Area air quality to return to normal, healthy levels. The chilling orange skies also came in the midst of a record-setting 30-day Spare the Air alert.

There have been several wildfires across the Bay Area and Northern California in the ensuing four years, including the Boyles Fire , currently burning in Clearlake. However, we have never seen another day quite like Sept. 9, 2020, forever remembered as “Orange Skies Day.”

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