Les Cowley is publisher of the very popular website Atmospheric Optics (https://www.atoptics.co.uk). He is a specialist in the both atmospheric optics and meteorological optics, and in the subjects of optical effects, light and color in nature, rainbows, halos, glories, green flashes and more. By training, he's a chemical physicist and has researched intermolecular forces, dynamics of chemical reactions and combustion phenomena. But on one winter’s afternoon in the 1970s he was dragged outside from all that to see an ice halo display. The sky was seemingly webbed and criss-crossed with delicate arcs. He did not know their names nor how they had formed but he was hooked. He now researches atmospheric phenomena and spreads this once-esoteric interest via websites and writings.
Perhaps you’ve seen the photos of the eerie red skies over San Francisco and other cities in the U.S. West this week as massive ongoing wildfires rage. But why red exactly?