Blood Red Sunset 'Like No Other' Has LIers Looking To The Skies

LONG ISLAND, NY — What looked like a blood-red, blazing ball in the sky during Wednesday's sunset had awestruck Long Island residents turning to social media to share photos and describe the experience.

"This sunset tonight was like no other," said Cutchogue's Toni Ann Sinning on Facebook. "It looked like a fireball candy! No filter. My eyes are still seeing spots."

"It was crazy looking," Gabrielle Stroup of Peconic agreed.

But the reason for the brilliant burst of color has less to do with artistic interpretation and everything to do with science.

According to Bryan Ramsey, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Upton, the intense sunsets are caused by wildfire; currently, wildfire smoke from Canada has been passing above Long Island.

Ramsey said during the day, the skies are blue and when the sun sets, the colors take on a more reddish huge because red is the last color of the rainbow. The colors of the rainbow scatter at the end of the day, so what's left is red — that's what's able to make it through the atmosphere, he said.

When a region is experience wildfire smoke, the rays from the sun have to travel through all those extra particles and, typically, cause redder sunsets, Ramsey said.

"When the sun is higher above the horizon it's brighter; as it gets closer it's darker and as it goes down, it's more intense. All the smoke particles cause that light to get scattered a bit more, causing it to get redder sooner," he said.

Not everyone sees the sunsets as intensely, Ramsey added. Wildfires are bringing the smoke overhead high in the air in the jet stream and its position can change pretty quickly, he said. Blood-red sunsets are generally seen in the mid to late summer when wildfires are raging out west, he said.

"That smoke can travel quite a distance," Ramsey said.

According to Erie News Now, Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada told CTVNews.ca in an interview that when the sky is clear, all seven wavelengths of light that are visible to the human eye can reach the ground. When the weather is dry and smoke is high in the atmosphere, Phillips told the outlet that smoke particles block the shorter wavelengths of light from reaching the ground, the post said.

There was a possibility for the blood-red sunset Thursday night on Long Island, too, Ramsey said.

If you have photos to share of the extraordinary sunset, send them to Lisa.Finn@patch.com.