Like many other San Francisco residents on the morning of September 9, 2020, I double-checked the time when I woke up to a blackened bedroom—surely it was still the middle of the night. But the typical California sunshine had failed to make an appearance that day. Amid an unprecedented wildfire season across the state and the Pacific Northwest, almost five hundred thousand acres were ablaze, releasing tremendous amounts of smoke. Some of that smoke converged over the Bay Area on its way to the ocean, mixing with the city’s iconic fog to create a blanket that the sunlight could barely penetrate—only the longer wavelengths of light could get through, bathing the city in a deep orange glow.
The latest New Yorker video documents what San Franciscans look back on as “Orange Day.” Across the city, disconcerted citizens wandered into the streets and visited hilltop vantage points, trying to capture the sky’s effect with their smartphone cameras—some of which proved too smart for the task, by automatically cancelling out the orange color. Locals’ photos and video footage chronicle the city’s familiar sights—the Golden Gate Bridge, Oracle Park, undeterred commuter traffic flowing down the highways—rendered alien and vaguely hostile by the persimmon glow.
It’s not an idle fear. Chris Field, a climate scientist at Stanford University, provides an expert take on the day’s phenomenon, calling the blood-orange skyscape an “exclamation point” on the changing conditions that enable wildfires. In the past couple of decades, Field says, about half of the increase in wildfire activity has been a direct result of climate change—meaning that, during that time, climate change has essentially doubled the amount of area lost to wildfires.
San Francisco’s residents were not in any immediate danger from the wildfires. In fact, the smoke was so high in the atmosphere that it offered a reprieve from the unhealthy air quality that had been plaguing us for weeks, closing businesses and forcing people indoors. I even went for a run that day through Golden Gate Park—although, looking around, I was unable to shake the image of the “This is fine” meme. An undercurrent of foreboding saturated the day. Witnesses in the film describe feeling confused and afraid; they compare the conditions to the end of the world, an apocalypse, the inhospitable surface of Mars. And they express worries that this will become more ordinary, that the fires are only going to get worse each year.
Field’s conclusion is unequivocal. “Climate change definitely causes more wildfires, more days when we have wildfires, more days when we have heavy smoke,” he says.
Humans often need an unignorable warning before being prompted into action—a siren wailing, a car horn blaring. On this day, the sky itself, blazing biohazard orange, sounded a silent but urgent alarm.
