A Blurry Day

This morning before breakfast, Sawyer looked out the window and told me it was "a blurry day." It gets kinda blurry around here in the winter time. We've heard that the farmers out in the country always burn off whatever is left in the fields this time of year, and the smoke blows into town and makes everything a little "blurrier" than usual. This first picture is of a clear day in October. The flying things are guys in motorized parachute gliders who were up over the city for a big holiday celebration. (As always, you can click on any picture for a closer look.)

The next photo shows what the grey winter does. Notice how the farthest building on the horizon seems to have disappeared.

And this orange-looking effect was not added by computers. That's what the sky does when we have a sandstorm.

I use the last building I can see as my smog-o-meter every morning. On especially clear days I can see the blue and white colors of some of the window frames. On moderately smoggy days, I can make out the silhouette of the building, but not see window colors. And on bad, "blurry" days, that building just isn't to be seen. Google Earth shows that building to be 3/4 mile away, or just over one kilometer.