sky and sun pictures posted 10/14/04

i don't know if the fires burning around the napa valley and the sierra foothills are in the national news, but so far there are something like 60000 acres that have burned in the last couple of days. as you can imagine, the air quality and color is just a tad bit off. the following pictures are not manipulated at all, except to resize for use in the blog. way ugly out there

this is what the sun and sky looked like, towards the east at about 1000 this morning. this was taken in front of my workplace in sacramento.


this is looking east at noon. see the gradations of smoke? the whole place smelled like a campfire gone horribly wrong


this is the evening sky in napa, looking west. it's about 1700 in this picture, and it should be bright out. the sun is so occluded that you can look directly at it. actually the sun has the appearance of a total eclipse. very muted and red/pink. it's quite eerie to tell the truth.