This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The sky above San Francisco was the color of television, tuned to the president.
To be fair, I stole that punchline from Twitter, and nerd-lit snark about Donald Trump’s apparent choices in his alleged makeup won’t fix climate change and the worst North American fire season on record. Nearly 100 fires are burning across the West, driven by lightning sieges and dry wind blasting through drought-parched, beetle-eaten forest and chaparral. So far flames have consumed 3.4 million acres, including entire towns and more than 1,000 homes. But none of that explains what happened to the sky. Residents of California’s Bay Area didn’t think it was funny to wake up Wednesday morning to a sunless sky the color of the Golden Gate Bridge. Street lights didn’t turn off; the massive Sutro broadcast antenna poked through the haze like a mechatronic Eye of Sauron; and an angry-magma glow suffused everything, like being caught in just one stripe of a fabulous sunset. Amid despondent half-jokes ab... Read more
