Lifetime snaps of San Franciscos skyline cloaked in a cloud of orange. Its really sad that its the condition the way it is, but it makes for some really dramatic pictures for sure. Reporter both automobile photographers trevor joelen and daniel turned their back to the road and pointed up. Even with the fog, its usually just gray and neutral colors, but today its a lot more orange and red. Reporter in walnut creek, cars were covered in arab and in oakland the zoo closed because of poor air quality. The solar panels on a abc 7 photographers home in pinole generated a fraction of electricity when the suns rays actually reach the earth. Out here in the bay exercising, fishing, doing whatever they can to find some slice of normalcy. I was pretty disoriented, honestly. I missed an appointment. I almost never do that. Reporter Jason Johnson says the weather reminds him of growing up in the midwest. A storm would blow in around the time of a tornado or Something Like that and it would be pitch black outside all of a sudden in the middle of the day. It is very peculiar for this area. Its just so crazy, you know, the virus, i mean, everything is just like what next . Reporter reagan spent the evening fishing at point emory. He said the only other team hes felt this way was when he was working on the collapsed bay bridge after the 1989 earthquake. It felt like the end of the world. Reporter the sky didnt turn away gourmet diners. A craving for pizza. A dystopian reality how is the pizza making you feel . Honestly, a lot better. I recommend it, yeah. Reporter so grab a slice. Its called comfort food for a reason. Kate larson, abc 7 news. And it has to help at least a little bit. Well, people we talked with tonight say the sinister skies were not like anything theyve ever seen before. Abc 7 News Reporter j. R. Stone has reaction and disbelief from San Francisco. Reporter this is what downtown San Francisco looked like at 9 30 wednesday morning. A skyline with an unforgettable yet eerie orange backdrop as smoke from the north pushed into the area. Apocalyptic and unearthly and just something ive never seen before. Reporter thoughts echoed by those in San Francisco and across the bay area. In half moon bay, Christopher Manchester was giving a kayak tour, and this is what it looked like. From a dark orange, almost red to a yellow. Ive been here 30 years. I dont recall anything like that. Ive been here 20 years from new york. Ive never seen anything like it. Reporter leo gomez shot this video showing the ash that had fallen from the sky. Even into the afternoon hours, the dark orange skies stayed with us. I went live on facebook near San Franciscos city hall just after 1 00 wednesday afternoon and the sky hadnt changed a bit. You can see what im talking about as i go from this low angle here of what the skies look like here in San Francisco. Its so unfortunate. While we may be concerned about the quality of our air, theres thousands, tens of thousands of acres burning, and so thats immediately where my mind went. Reporter certainly a sad reminder of the fires that are burning across california and the northwest. Its sad, you know . I mean, here we dont suffer from the fire, we just get the smoke, but its its just sad to see with the climate warming up that so many fires are ravaging california and even other states. Reporter j. R. Stone, abc 7 news. Now, let me show you this. This was the average air quality for the bay area today. According to purple air, most areas were in yellow and orange as you can see. Previously days have been deep red and purple. So why did we see ominous orange skies but decent air quality . Well, heres abc 7 news meteorologist sandhya patel to explain. Sandhya, so interesting when you step outside you expect it to feel and smell much worse than it actually did. Absolutely. And, dan, you didnt really smell that much smoke and there was good reason for this. It felt like we step on to another planet, on to mars today. Take a look at this explanation. Dense smoke from the bear and august complex fires drifted into our area in the upper part of the atmosphere. Dimming the sunlight and making it feel more like night than day. It felt like we were on mars. We had a multilevel smoke deck that was so thick that it reduced visibility. The winds were so light that it couldnt turn over the atmosphere but the smoke remained aloft and the air quality wasnt as unhealthy as weve seen in days past. Theres a scientific explanation for why the sky looks so orange today. The longer wavelength colors of the sun like orange, yellow and red can travel far and pass through smoke. The shorter wavelength colors like blue, green, violet and indigo cant travel as far and they reflect and bounce back. Now, i do want to show you that smoke from the satellite perspective. In the upper layers of the atmosphere, the wind direction was out of the northnortheast, so the large fires, the august kplebs fi complex fire and also the bear fire transporting the smoke down into our area. We had the stable fog layer at the lower parts of the atmosphere. Its a very complicated outlook. Im getting asked a lot on social media. So are we going to see a repeat of the orange skies of today . The reason why it so mpis the coming out of the southsouthwest. Onshore breezes, but there are fires burning to our south, multiple fires in the state, which makes it complicated, along with the wind direction. We know one things for sure, the fog and the smoke reducing visibility to 1 million in half moon bay, 4 miles in santa rosa. Watch out tomorrow during the commute. Air quality right now because a lot of that smoke is aloft, its not down near the surface, moderate to poor here in the bay area. Ill be back with a look at the spare the air alert and how long its going, plus a look at when some areas may see some rain. Dan . That really explains why this occurred. Thank you very much. Thank you. See you in a few minutes. People in the Castro Valley area are among those who cant believe what theyre seeing. A silhouette of black and misty orange. You can see the tower there between twin peaks and mount sutro. 16th and market street, a popular intersection. Never seen it in this light. Dawn promptly turned into night with no daylight in between in the castro. Now on the peninsula, the haze came with a coating of ash from wildfires. More than 150 miles away, keep in mind. You can see cars are coated in it. The smoke layer made it so dark, sensor lights were staying on in the middle of the day, and the crickets were actually chirping. They were fooled, too. And this is what it look like from the air. A passenger took these photos from a window seat as his plane was landing at sfo. You could smell smoke in the cabin. Unfortunately, we could see outside. It wasnt engine fire smoke, just burning you could smell. You could see the ground on that side. You couldnt see it on this side just dark, dark burnt orange. It was crazy. Reporter sfo says the air quality did not affect departures or arrivals believe it or not. It was raining ash at the heyward airport this afternoon. Our sky 7 photojournalist found car after car coated in the thin layer of that ash. Well, the north complex fires burning north of sacramento was responsible for some of the smoke now drifting our way, and one of the fires in the complex, the bear fire, exploded in size last night and has now sadly turned deadly. Terrifying video shows the fire whipping along a road in oroville this morning. That fire has burned more than 252,000 acres in these counties. It is 24 contained. Parts of the town of oroville are still under threat and some of the surrounding area has already burned. People come around and have breakfasts there, and ive had christmas there and thanksgiving before. The fire has now forced evacuation warnings for part of the town of paradise. All too familiar for residents, the camp fire, remember, destroyed the town two years ago and killed dozens of people. Tonight the butte county sheriff had to announce three unevidence individuals have now died in the bear fire. This is the part of my presentation that ive been dreading. It brings back memories very painful memories. 12 people are unaccounted for. Firefighters say theyve had to rescue more than 100 people and fire conditions have been tough. Today one fire crew had to take shelter in a building while their vehicle burned. To provide some relief tonight, some firefighters from several east bay departments left for the bear fire to pitch in and help out. You can follow the fires all across california with our exclusive wildfire tracker. It will also provide you with air quality information. Thats available now at abc7news. Com and the abc 7 news app as well. In the north bay, smokey skies ainfected pg es efforts today to restore power knocked out by Public Safety power shutoffs. 16 helicopters were grounded because there was just poor visibility. They couldnt fly. The lights are back on tonight for most of the estimated 172,000 impacted customers in 22 counties where the power was deliberately cut off to prevent fires. That includes more than 22,000 residents in sonoma and napa counties. A lot more to come here on a busy night. Smoke and haze so thick that it shrouded the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. The rare Photo Opportunities it created for tourists. Respiratory relief. Air quality experts share tips on how to improve the air inside your home. That story up next. And the pandemic has added new challenges for working parents. Could paid leave help build a better bay area . Well have that and a lot more, but first, heres a look at whats coming up tonight on Jimmy Kimmel Live with guest host brad paisley. Brad . Thanks, dan. Im brad paisley, youre welcome. Guillermo, lets give the challenge another try. Want to . Sure, whatever you say, man. All right. Lets see this. Just before 11 00 a. M. On wednesday and all this smoke, this is all we can see from the Golden Gate Bridge and were right next to it. All of this coming down from the north. Its like nighttime out here. If you look at the cars coming down the mountain there, they all have their lights on. Ive been reporting 42 years. Have never seen anything like this and hope i never see it again. We are all with in agreement with our Wayne Freeman on that. Drone 7 captured images of the San Francisco skyline and along the embarcadero this morning. Landmarks all against a dark orange smokefilled backdrop. And take a look at this incredible video from oakland shot at 11 30 this morning. Just watch as the drone zooms out and the city skyline just disappear into a thick orange haze as we pull out, youll see it just vanishes. In that eerie rustcolored sky. Well, theres no denying the entire bay area witnessing the effects of californias rages wildfires. And abc 7 News Reporter spoke with experts about best practices and ways you can protect yourself from all this smokey air. Sukhois may have kept smoke and many indoors wednesday, but air quality experts say you can take safety a step further by investing in quality air purifies and filters. Having at least bun clean room would be kind of a good resource for people to have, especially now that wove got this sort of new normal. Reporter he means an area closed off from contaminants. He suggests nonozoneproducing, high efficiency particulate or hipaa filters. Art is not all made equal. Make sure that the product youre about to purchase because right now theres a lot of products on the market. That those products not only were tested, but they actually pass the standards. At Lawrence Livermore national laboratory, this engineer is working with adams on a project to clear air indoors and improve health. Their ongoing effort made more challenging with both covid19 and california wildfires. Whether its wildfire or virus, we need to have a closer tack on that. Reporter for covid, adam says the goal is to increase ventilation by bringing in outside air to dilute the air indoors. To combat smoke the recommendation is to stay indoors, shut windows and to prevent outside air from coming in. Its a doubleedged problem that were currently faced with and its slightly contradictory lens of what should we do. Her advice, go back to basics when disinfecting indoors. Use baking soda or vinegar instead of chemicals. This will limit the need to ventilate and let in outside air. All right. Lets move on now to another topic. Because of the pandemic, bay area workers are all facing new job realities from new safety protocols to working from home, changing careers and managing work life balance. Not easy. Everyone is looking for solutions. And most parents agree working from home and managing a te lea nearly impossible at times. And parents are making very tough choices in their professional lives in order to accommodate the lack of childcare. Abc 7 found that some may qualify for paid leave. Reporter six months into the pandemic parents working from home while taking their of their kids are burnt out. Two hours of work, one hour with him, three hours of work. Reporter when schools announced they would not reopen in the fall for inperson learning, many parents had to make some important decisions and career moves. Care. Com is a Service Helping families find and manage childcare. They surveyed 1,000 parents with children under th age of 15. 73 of them said they plan to make major changes to their professional lives to address the lack of childcare for the Current School year, and of those, 15 said they were considering leaving the workforce altogether. That would be tommy betles. I am a finance professional work for a software company. Reporter but this summer when the family realized that 6yearold oliver would not be returning to school for inperson learning, betles decided to quit his job to help manage the ht t preschool, and supervise his sons Online Education at home. Up to this point, my wifes been the one to make most of the sacrifices in her career for mine. Serving as the primary parent. And it was only fair that i do the same, and id always wanted an opportunity to kind of return the favor, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Cant read that. Oh, come on. Reporter Literacy Development begins early in a childs life. They require that oneonone attention. Im worried that zoom is just not going to provide that, and theres a big downstream effect as a result. Reporter while he says for now they can manage on one salary, other parents cant. What many dont know is that they may qualify for paid leave through the familys first Coronavirus Response act, which passed last march. If youre a parent and you have a child under the age of 18 whose school or childcare has closed then you are entitled of up to 12 weeks of time away from work at 2 3 pay. The company you work for can make up the difference to make you whole. But people who are essential workers dont qualify and your company has to have 500 or less employees. The act is expected to expire in december. Congress is now trying to pass the h. E. R. O. E. S. Act which would extend those benefits, but its stuck in the senate. Those who have decided to leave the workforce hope to eventually return. Specific to my situation, perhaps my company would say, yeah, come on back. Ill stay in the same profession. And hopefully people wont mind that theres a little bit of a gap in my in my employment. Reporter most agree its risky to leave the workforce amid an economic crisis, but many are willing to chance it for the benefit of their children in these trying times. Leeann melendez, abc 7 news. People meeting the challenges as best they can. All right. Lets return to the weather. Meteorologist sandhya patel is back with the forecast for the next few days. Sandhya . Yeah, dan, it seemed so surreal today with the orangey skies, ash falling from the sky. I want to show you a live picture tonight from our san jose camera. It is a very murky view as we are dealing with not only the fog and low clouds, but also still the haze and the smoke. As you can see from our east bay hills camera, this is a time lapse that captured both the fog and the smokey skies, the orangey haze there across the region. Now, a lot of people are asking, are we going to see this again . I think tomorrow there will still be time to see the orangey sky. Air quality will continue to suffer. I want to show you the smoke forecast down near the surface tomorrow morning. That smoke settles so some areas will be in orange here in the bay area. So the air quality will deteriorate as we head into the nighttime hours. Notice with the change in the wind direction, some of that smoke from the dolan fire on the Central Coast will be moving into our area, so just because wind changing doesnt mean were out of the woods in terms of the smoke impacts. This continues and we get a brief respite early friday, but then it picks back up again. Air quality will suffer through friday, so a spare the air alert is up through friday. Poor to mad rate, saturday sunday, moderate air quality from the district. Live dopplar 7 showing you fog near the coast. A look at those temperatures, and, really, they didnt warm up much 20, 30plus drop in temperature. Upper 50s to low 60s. The highs for today, anywhere from the low 60s to the low 70s. Nothing like what we expected. Its a very foggy view. Expect fog, haze and patchy drizzle tomorrow morning. Poor air quality again and that spare the air alert continues. As we look at the hour by hour forecast, definitely watch out for slippery roads at 5 00 a. M. And around 8 00 a. M. As we will see some spotty drizzle and mist along the coast, around parts of the bay, by 4 00 p. M. , the fog layer thins out a bit. Perhaps youll see a little more mixing along the coastline and blue skies. Temperatures anywhere from the low 50s to upper 50s tomorrow morning, and then tomorrow afternoon, low 60s to the upper 80s. It is still going to be hazy across the region. Heres a look at the extended outlook. One computer model bringing the Pacific Northwest some rain. Northern california, monday night into tuesday, possibly into wednesday. Keeping an eye on this, it could slip south into our region which, of course, we all need here. Accuweather sevenday forecast. Spare the air with smoke and haze the next couple of days. A little warmer saturday