In Oregon, wildfires have incinerated several communities this week, and thousands of people have evacuated their homes. In Washington State, a fire hit the town of Malden so quickly that deputies drove through the streets screaming for residents to leave. In Colorado, a 100,000-acre blaze was slowed only by a rare September snowstorm.
And in California, residents are coping with the worst wildfires on record. Smoke blotted out the sun yesterday in San Francisco, and ash fluttered down from the sky. “The sky had a faint orange glow that some said evoked a nuclear winter,” Thomas Fuller, The Times’s San Francisco bureau chief, told us. Jill Cowan, a Times reporter in Los Angeles, said, “The smoke and the poor air quality are just oppressive.”
Life across much of the American West is pretty miserable right now — and global warming is at least partly to blame. Climate change has increased the frequency of very hot days, droughts and, by extension, wildfires.
More at
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/...dward-coronavirus-your-thursday-briefing.html
And in California, residents are coping with the worst wildfires on record. Smoke blotted out the sun yesterday in San Francisco, and ash fluttered down from the sky. “The sky had a faint orange glow that some said evoked a nuclear winter,” Thomas Fuller, The Times’s San Francisco bureau chief, told us. Jill Cowan, a Times reporter in Los Angeles, said, “The smoke and the poor air quality are just oppressive.”
Life across much of the American West is pretty miserable right now — and global warming is at least partly to blame. Climate change has increased the frequency of very hot days, droughts and, by extension, wildfires.
More at
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/...dward-coronavirus-your-thursday-briefing.html