by Tom Shafer
June 9, 2023
So, out here in the back forty of the Midwest, weather is always big news, and most local newscasts provide a brief preview in the first five minutes. For the last week or so, unless you have been living under a rock — which is where I spend much of my time — you couldn’t have missed hearing and reading about air quality problems in our area. Of course, those problems are not confined just to the Miami Valley. Because of numerous wildfires occurring in the Great North — our neighbors up in Canada — air quality is being affected from Chicago down to North Carolina and all along the East Coast.
And though this can be dangerous for people suffering from lung-related issues and older and younger folk, many Americans living in these locales have been posting their dramatic sunset photographs to numerous social media platforms. Because the air is being diffused and absorbed by particulates from the fires, rays (wavelengths actually) emanating from the sun are scattered and bent differently, thus muting the lower end of the visible spectrum while enhancing its upper end — those reds and oranges and yellows that we love in our sunsets.
Likewise, night sky viewers like me have noticed a visual change in our friendly satellite the moon. On most nights, the moon looks like this:
But, on Saturday, June 3rd, when the affects of the fires were just arriving in our area, the moon took on a different hue:
Then, just two nights later on the 5th, on a day when air quality was at its worst and our world here smelled like a campfire, the moon rose with this dramatic countenance:
According to Old Farmer’s Almanac, June’s full moon is traditionally called the Strawberry Moon because Native American cultures harvested wild strawberries during this month of the year. But, the moon traditionally doesn’t look like our tasty, red-stained friend.
Now, I know that we humans appreciate beautiful sunsets and a vivid colorization of our moon, but I think we like breathing clean, filtered oxygen more. Unfortunately, the fire season up north and in the West has started much earlier than usual, likely influenced by global warming, so we may be dealing with this for a while — and unfortunately again, this may become the new norm as our planet grows warmer.
Hopefully, firefighters will soon gain the upper hand in their efforts to suppress these blazes, and air quality will return to healthier levels. But until they do, we will continue to enjoy striking sunsets while wheezing and coughing up our lungs.
BTW, my deceased father-in-law and founder of this site, Richard Seifried, spent a few years fighting fires in the West, and he related an interesting story, titled “Corn Creek and the Ranger,” which can be found here under the Ole Richard’s Archive tab.
