As wildfires burn in the Williams Lake area in the BC Interior, regions over 300 kilometers away are being advised of air quality concerns and people that might have respiratory issues are being advised to take precautions.
During the day today, you could still feel the warmth and the stickiness of a hot and humid day in the Comox Valley, but you didn’t really need sunglasses. But it was after dinner this evening that i really noticed the effects of the smoke that has come from more than 300 KMs away where 500 square kilometers of forest are being destroyed by fire.
Normally, as the sun lowers in the Western Sky, we close the blinds in our living room to keep things comfortable. The sun shines directly into that room in the evenings and makes just about anything we want to do difficult as most of our activities are faced toward that window.
However, this evening, as I looked out to see whether it was necessary or not, I realized that I was looking DIRECTLY AT the sun and it was barely bright enough to take my attention. This caused some curiosity of course, so I grabbed a camera and went out to the Comox Airport at the end of the runway to get a better look.
Below are three images, captured today (August 4) at 7:30 PM. Normally, facing my camera at the sun at this time of day would be putting my eyes and my camera sensor at risk, but as you’ll see below the sun was so badly filtered by the smoke in the atmosphere that I could look directly at it without filters or shades of any kind, and actually capture a few shots of it.
The first shot is just of the sun and some local landscape to place the sun in position in the sky. Some might want to confirm that these were taken at 7:30! The second shot doesn’t actually show the sun, but shows that the runway lights on runway 30 of CYQQ (Comox Airport) are on to ensure that incoming aircraft have something of a visual reference. I’ve lived here in Comox for 17 years and have never before seen these lights on and showing so brightly at this time of day in the summer months.
And the last image puts the two things together. The sun, as you can see, is dimmer already only about 3 minutes later. About 15 minutes after these were taken I could barely find the sun in the sky.
I can only imagine what the air is like as you move east and closer to the source of the smoke. These fires are massive and are pouring a tremendous amount of particulate into the atmosphere. Forecasters are calling for the air quality to improve in the next couple of days, but I also hope that the weather will give the firefighters a break very soon.
Stay tuned to the news for more about the fires, and their impact, on our community and so many others.
Note that these images are NOT edited in any way except to convert directly from RAW file to JPG and resize/watermark for uploading. There are no adjustments made of any other kind.
