Lydia Bird: An Unforgettable Day

Lydia Bird reflects on what it was like to witness Orange Sky Day in the Bay Area.

Something felt strange as I surfaced from sleep on September 9th, 2020. I felt like I’d slept long and well, but it was barely light out, the sky deep orange from what I assumed was the sunrise. I stretched, then checked my phone for the time. 9:16 a.m.

I scrambled out of bed and stood at the window, suddenly very awake. The streetlights were still on. So were interior lights in neighboring houses. The color wasn’t just in the east. The entire sky was dark umber orange. I pulled on clothes and hurried outside.

The fire season had been raging since May, with two and a half million acres already burned in California. We’d had unprecedented smoke in the Bay Area — orange skies at sunset, dull gray skies midday filtering a blood-red sun. This was different. This was a snapshot from Mars.

Ash was falling, white and light, not the sooty ash I was used to. I looked down the block and saw no smoky haze, just the receding streetlights and wrong-colored sky. A flock of crows cawed and wheeled overhead.

Back inside, I learned from an Air Quality District tweet that strong winds had transported ash from the fires high into the air above the Bay Area. “These smoke particles,” I read, “scatter blue light and only allow yellow-orange-red light to reach the surface.” Who knew the color blue was so easily broken?

Five years later, I stand at my window on a blue-sky September morning. A chickadee lands in my oak tree a few feet away. The year 2020 now seems unbelievable — wildfires, hurricanes, global pandemic. Our challenges are new ones, huge ones, but today I’ll embrace this moment of grace. With a Perspective, I’m Lydia Bird.

Lydia Bird is a semiretired author and editor living in Alameda. Birds ground her.