[Update 20:20 MDT: My brother-in-law took some amazing pictures of the fire, including this one of the reddened sunset, and this one after dark.]
Right now as I write this there is a pretty big wildfire in Gold Hill, Colorado, about 15 kilometers west of where I live. There's a thick pall of orange-brown smoke going straight over us. This is the view to the west a little while ago, toward the foothills of the Rocky Mountains:
You can see the Flatirons to the left. The smoke totally blocks the hills north of there though. The smoke is much wider now from my view, covering almost 90° of the horizon, and the plume is clearly several kilometers across. The Sun is shining through, but it's dulled to an orange ember:
Ironically, the morning started off cool and breezy, the first autumn-like day we've had. I went upstairs to tell The ...
