When the World was Orange

Five years ago we awoke to an orange sky::

distant wildfire smoke, cool fog, and still air combined to turn the sky orange. It was so dark that the automatic street lights were on at 10 a.m.

Chronicle photographer Jessica Christian captured the "otherworldly" mood that morning in the above view of the Bay Bridge from the Embarcadero.

I was thinking about what iconic locations I could visit that would give a sense of place while also showing this bizarre orange sky and how people were reacting to it.

I photographed my drive across the Bay Bridge, I got off at the first San Francisco exit and photographed the iconic view of the bridge from looking east on Harrison, then decided to head towards the Embarcadero. Remember, we were in the middle of a pandemic that kept us at least six feet apart at all times. The city had been eerily quiet for at least six months, so I remember the first thought I had wasn’t of the sky, but it was the surprise of being surrounded by so many strangers for the first time in a very long time. It felt like everybody came out of their offices or their houses to experience the strange sky, to ask each other what was going on. In a moment of some real fear, there was also community and I think we were all craving that. No one was looking at their phones, they were looking up.

I took this photo at 9:48 a.m. It took a little while for us to get answers as to why this was happening, but … this phenomenon was the result of multiple wildfires burning across California and (the Pacific Northwest) sending smoke hovering above a low-lying marine layer of fog where the sun cut through both, illuminating the sky orange. It only lasted a few hours, the orange glow illuminated only because of the low angle of the morning sun. It was something that had rarely happened before and would maybe never happen again.

The person in this photo is named Eli Harik. After I took the photo I asked for his name and we kind of just talked about how crazy this all was. When I first spotted him, I wasn’t sure if his mask was being used to protect him from the heavy wildfire smoke in the air or to protect him from COVID, which is just a wild thing to think about five years later. Later on, as the picture got more popular online, Eli had friends and family, reaching out to him after recognizing him. To this day, we follow each other on Instagram. The seagull in this photo is also notable. I wonder what was going through its head while it shared this moment looking at the sky with Eli.

Some environmental enthusiasts (alarmists is too strong a word) believed that this orange sky would be the first of many. We have not seen its like again.