‘Like a scene from Mars’: Skies in parts of California turn orange as wildfires rage – NBC News

At about 11 a.m., the sky around San Francisco appeared to have gotten darker, and the sun still was not visible behind the smoke.

Large areas of California have burned for weeks as fires consumed 2.3 million acres, or 20 times what burned all of last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday. In Washington state, wildfires virtually wiped out an entire small town Tuesday. In Oregon, thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes Wednesday after fires broke out across the state, The Oregonian reported.

Smoke-filled skies added to the fear and tension even for residents whose homes arent immediately threatened. Some said it looked like another planet; others like nuclear winter.

Much of the West Coast is choking on a thick veil of smoke as historic wildfires rage across the region. Images captured Wednesday from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations GOES-17 satellite demonstrate just how widespread the smoke has become. The images, processed by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University, show much of California and western Oregon shrouded in intense, billowing smoke.

This morning I woke up at 7 a.m. and thought my alarm was wrong because it was so dark, said Kelly Groth, who lives in San Francisco. I didnt smell smoke but had a feeling the fires were affecting the atmosphere. I pulled back my curtains to see the sky was dark orange, and it felt so apocalyptic. Ive lived in the Bay Area my whole life and never seen anything like it.

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'Like a scene from Mars': Skies in parts of California turn orange as wildfires rage - NBC News