The Year the Sun Turned Red

I’ve begun to see clouds differently.

In early June we started to get smoke from the fires in Arizona and, they said, Mexico.

At first it simply got hazy and the sun turned red. When we had dust storms when I lived in Abilene, Texas, the sun turned silver as the sky turned dark at noon.

I don’t know why the difference but suspect it’s in the particles in the air that are filtering the sun - that the dust storm is simply dirt, and all that’s picked up from the ground, while the smoke includes organic matter from burning trees as well as the chemicals used to fight the fire.

That’s when I began to question clouds. For they showed up every evening at about the same time.

I knew that no matter how regular the work of the fire fighters, we couldn’t be exactly the number of miles away from the fire that their smoke got to us at the right time to turn the sun red. I knew the fires were burning 24 hours a day, no matter how many hours the fire fighters were working.

I decided, based on no information, that the smoke was coming our way all day, but that it only became visible when the sun went down. This wasn’t just the disappearance of light, but a function of the sun itself.

During the day, its heat evaporated whatever moisture was in the smoke from the water used to fight it. When the water disappeared, the dust became lighter and fell to the earth. One day I came home to find an orange poppy petal splotched with white spots like someone had spilled bleach on it.

As the sun began dropping in the west, its heat intensity changed and more water remained in the smoke so it became visible.



The fire in Los Alamos began Sunday afternoon. The sunset was normal. Monday was the first day since Arizona filled the sky that the sun was red. The firefighters had begun work in earnest.




Top picture: Smoke from the Wallow fire in Arizona, looking west towards the Jemez, June 2 about 6:57 pm.

Middle picture: The first day of the Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos, before the firefighting began in earnest, June 26 about 8:14pm.

Bottom picture: Smoke from the Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos, looking at the Jemez a little more to the south, June 27 about 7:08pm.