A Shuswap sunrise has a strange light in wildfire smoke in September.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Ann Steenhuysen
September 10, 2025 - 4:00 AM
Wildfire smoke has turned skies over Kamloops and the Okanagan hazy for more than a week, creating eery lighting during the day, and turning the sun and moon red.
The strange coloured lighting has to do with how sunlight interacts with particles like soot and ash.
Sunlight is made of various colours that each have a different wavelength. When light passes through Earth’s atmosphere it interacts with air molecules and dust molecules that radiate light through a phenomenon called Raleigh scattering.
On a typical day without wildfire smoke, the light interacts with tiny particles and molecules like oxygen and nitrogen. The particles are much smaller than a wavelength of light. Shorter wavelengths like blue and violet are scattered more by the tiny particles compared to longer wavelengths like red.
A Kamloops sunset looks red and orange through wildfire smoke.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Kevin Palmer
When wildfire smoke fills the air with much larger particles of soot and ash, the light is scattered in a different way through a phenomenon called Mie scattering, according to The Weather Network. The particles are the same size or larger than the wavelengths of light, resulting in a more even scattering of wavelengths, which creates a whitish colour in the sky.
Smoke particles filter out most of the blue and green wavelengths, allowing the longer red and orange wavelengths to come through. At sunrise and sunset, the red and orange colours are more evident because when the sun is low on the horizon, light has to pass through more of Earth’s atmosphere.
The same phenomena occur when moonlight is reflected off the Earth’s surface and interacts with molecules and particles.
While the wildfire smoke is not something to celebrate, some shutterbugs were able to capture the strangeness of the lighting. There was significant wildfire smoke during the full moon earlier this month, which made for some unusual photographs.
If you have cool sky photos to share, send them news@infonews.ca.
The sun in Summerland is bright orange surrounded by white light in wildfire smoke in September.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Mariola Wierzbicki
The full September moon in Kamloops looks eery through wildfire smoke.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Peter Olsen
The full September moon appears red through wildfire smoke in Kamloops.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Ahnaf Lamim
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