PENNSYLVANIA, USA — You may have noticed fall isn’t only for changing leaves, it’s also great for our sunsets as well.
“As we move away from summer and towards fall, our sun angle gets lower," said Lauren Casey, a meteorologist from Climate Central.
With a lower sun angle, sunlight has more atmosphere to travel through, scattering beams of light as it does so.
This is referred to as preferential or Rayleigh scattering.
“Those beams that are the shorter wavelengths like blue or violet get scattered out more effectively than beams of light with longer wavelengths like red and orange. So, they are more capable of getting to your eye,” said Casey.
All kinds of things in the atmosphere can cause this scattering.
Prime sunset viewing conditions may come from clouds, especially at a higher level, wispy ones like cirrus, exhaust or dust particles, and wildfire smoke in the atmosphere.
Recent examples where noticeable scatters were present include clouds ahead of the remnants of Hurricane Ian, and wildfire smoke from out west traveling here through the jet stream.
Some get concerned about western U.S. wildfire smoke as a vivid sunset producer. Thankfully, those particles in the atmosphere should not impact the air quality at the surface.
“When we are thousands of miles away from the wildfires in the western part of the country, it’s not going to impact our air quality most times here in Pennsylvania. That smoke layer is going to stay elevated way up high in the atmosphere and not able to get down to the surface to penetrate our lungs or cause any health effects," says Casey.
So, as we continue through the season, be sure to keep an eye out for these ingredients and get ready for the show!
Don’t forget to snap some photos too. You can send those in to us using our FOX43 App’s Near Me feature to be shown on our newscasts.