Firesky!

The sky in Kansas turned downright apocalyptical yesterday. A massive grass fire stretching from northern Oklahoma into southern Kansas released a dense plume of smoke stretching for hundreds of miles downwind. The tinder-dry conditions and howling south wind helped spread the fire through nearly 400,000 acres of range and canyon-land in Comanche and Barber counties. We noticed it starting to get hazy here by late morning, and by early afternoon the sky had turned a fiery yellow-orange.

 It looked very eerie, nearly twilight dark with the sun a dim red orb high in the sky.

 Eventually the wind switched to the southwest and it began to clear off.

You can't normally see sunspots without a special filter, but you certainly could through the dense haze!

This is actually what the sun looked like. I've never seen any weather conditions that made it look pink before







 






Fire rabbit



And yes, this is a horribly unfocused picture of a Bufflehead. But it is a Bufflehead, which up until now I had never seen in our yard. That, and I kind of like the background


Joseph