Wildfire Smoke Plume Blankets Bay Area Skies
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- For many Bay Area residents, the morning skies looked almost apocalyptic.
An ash plume carried by the wind from the wildfires in Yolo, Lake and Napa counties combined with the marine layer to give the sky a yellowish gray tinge.
In Vallejo, residents woke up to flakes of ash deposited on their cars. Meanwhile, in Berkeley chunks of ash floated gently from the sky.
Social media lit up with posts about raining ash, comparing it to snowfall.
"Right now, we're sort of in that perfect environment for them (ash flakes) to be transported into northern half of the Bay Area," said forecaster Jan Null. "It's a fairly broad swath going from the North Bay going into the middle portion of the Bay Area."
Null said the ash turned the sunrise orange.
"The particle size is much larger than the small sizes we see that give us the blue skies," he said. "When we get larger particles, we start filtering out the shorter wavelengths of light so all that's left are in the reds oranges and yellows."
On Ashby Ave., UC Berkeley physics student Graham Wolley said it was startling to see ash falling from the sky.
"When I saw it snowing down I thought it (the wildfire) was pretty close to us," he said. "I thought just might be up in the hills."
A dusting of ash fell as far away as San Francisco, where tourists snapped pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge enveloped in an orange shroud of fog and smoke.
Across the bridge in Marin County, some customers coughed as they stopped for gas at the Shell station in Sausalito, employee Sergio Garcia said.
"The sky is very dark, even in the middle of the day," he said. "It's a little scary."
Air Quality officials issued a smoke advisory for the Bay Area.
"Due to active wildfires and changing wind patterns, air quality throughout the Bay Area could continue to be impacted tomorrow," official said in a press release.
Air quality officials said the smoke and ash can irritate the eyes and airways, causing coughing, a scratchy throat and irritated sinuses.
