Why Does Wildfire Smoke Turn the Sky Orange?

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIt’s about how light scatters in our atmosphere.Listen · 1:52 min People walking in downtown Toronto on Wednesday.Credit...Cole Burston/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJuly 16, 2026, 4:38 p.m. ETSmoke from the Canadian wildfires is causing hazy orange skies and a red-tinged sun. The reason behind those colors has to do with physics.The sun emits light in a rainbow of different wavelengths, or colors. Longer wavelengths appear red to our eyes, while shorter wavelengths look blue. Sunlight reaching us on Earth first passes through our atmosphere, which is made of molecules that more readily scatter shorter wavelengths of light in all directions. That’s why our sky usually looks blue during the day.But during wildfires, an abundance of smoke is also present i