This is actually Earth’s sun, which was flame red when I took this photograph at 6:55 this morning. My camera rendered it white, perhaps because its lens went into shock.
The red sun effect is the product of forest fires in northern Idaho; the nearest to us is about 40 miles away.
The 3,200-foot-high basalt hills that mark the edge of the Palouse and compose our northward viewshed are completely obscured by smoke. It all looks like San Bernardino on an exceptionally smoggy day.
I rue having to bag our plan to fish for crappie and bass on the Snake River today, but I bear the bane of those “sensitive individuals” for whom an alert was issued, suggesting we avoid inhaling our local air.
Lightning, not human carelessness, was determined to be the cause of the fires.
Eel Creek Chronicles 