Smoke from wildfires in the taiga east of the Urals accounted for some spectacular sunsets in western Canada and the United States in recent days, Msnbc.com said on Wednesday.
The unusually colorful red and orange sky over Seattle, Vancouver and other cities on the Pacific coast was due to plumes of smoke wafted across the ocean, the report said.
The occurrence is not unique: wildfire fumes often rise to the altitude of 12 kilometers where they are picked by strong winds, NASA expert Colin Seftor said in June.
This year’s wildfires are worse than in 2010, when they engulfed most of central Russia, chocking the populous region with acrid smog, NASA quoted Greenpeace as saying. More than 200,000 hectares of forest already burned down in Siberia and the Russian Far East since the start of the summer, and 35,000 hectares were still engulfed by fire as of Wednesday afternoon, Russian emergency officials reported.