‘Sunset on Mars.’ Smoke from California fires gives national parks ‘apocalyptic’ glow

 

Yosemite National Park — the nation’s fifth “most visited” national park — has taken on the qualities of an alien world as a 152,833-acre Creek Fire burns out of control 60 miles to the south. The blaze has been growing out of control since Sept. 4, generating a blanket of smoke and ash that has displaced colors and transformed day into dusk at nearby state and national parks. Yosemite has been among the hardest hit, based on photos shared on social media. All show the park’s once magnificent vistas have turned orange, dingy and “ominous.” “There’s been many trips to Yosemite, but I’ve never seen it look so apocalyptic,” tweeted a park visitor named Mason. “Rained ashes all day. It looked like sunset on Mars for 7 hours,” added Naureen Malik. “You can hear the thunder being created by the smoke clouds. This is crazy,” Stephen Price tweeted Sept. 6 with a video of the rumblings. “It’s been continuous. Same yesterday ... at Glacial Point. You could hear the thunder in the valley.” Many of the tweets have included chilling observations that note nothing is what it seems to be anymore. Among the posts was one photo taken at night that showed a red glow on the horizon: “That’s not the sunrise,” Bobbi Caruthers wrote of the image. Other nearby state and national parks are also feeling the impact, including the Ansel Adams Wilderness, where hiker Asha Karim tweeted a series of increasingly dire messages that said he and others ran under “blood red skies” from the worsening smoke. The area is on Yosemite’s southeast border...MORE