‘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 175,000-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.

The National Weather Service says satellites are showing “a very thick multilevel smoke deck” has settled over much of California.

“This smoke is filtering the incoming energy from the sun, causing much cooler temperatures and dark dreary red-shifted skies across many areas,” the NWS tweeted Wednesday.

Multiple state and national parks in the region are seeing the results, 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.

“As we started in on the first 5 miles smoke started growing thicker, the skies darker,” Karim tweeted. “It became harder and harder to breathe. By the time we reached our first overlook, the thunder began rolling from the expanding smoke cloud overhead.”

Yosemite had not issued an evacuation order for visitors as of Sept. 8, but did post a fire advisory south of Chinquapin in the park. The advisory means park visitors must be prepared to evacuate quickly if conditions worsen.

This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 12:00 PM with the headline "‘Sunset on Mars.’ Smoke from California fires gives national parks ‘apocalyptic’ glow."