This is a sunset, not smoke. Right now the east coast of the US has spectacularly bad air quality from forest fire smoke. My son is going to work out indoors today, since he is in the DC metro area.
When I moved here, I was delighted by the air quality. That was 23 years ago. In the last five years, we have had smoke blowing in from forest fires to the east or south or north four of the five. Last year I built a home air purifier because the smoke was bothering my lungs even inside the house. It helped very much. I stayed inside for 8 days. The cats did not want to go out either.
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.” Ironic if it is smoke that takes us out.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: purist.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
I really feel for everyone affected, Katherine. We had nearly six months of air quality like that in 2019/2020. An older lady died on the tarmac after exiting a plane into those conditions, women miscarried and for many babies delivered, smoky particulates were their first breath. Productivity took a hit. The long term impact on lung health and its secondary impact on other chronic diseases like acardiovascular disease, is considerable. I’m sorry for our children, our animals and our world. Stay inside Katherine. Even that is not enough sometimes.
I am so sorry.
I am sorry for everyone who is going through the same thing in your country.
I have an asthmatic family. It’s rough. The sky is crazy.
I hope they are all doing ok.
I hate to think about what all that particulate matter will be doing to our lungs down the road- after it precipitates out and just become dust stirred up by the wind and passing cars. People forget that it’s not just now as atmospheric pollution, but it’s also later too.
Now that the smoke has reached population centers on the east coast, it has become national news. Here in flyover land, we’ve advanced from a couple weeks of air quality warnings to high fire risk warnings.
Yes, we had high fire risk warnings for much of Washingston State yesterday.
Watching the news last night to see that the smoke has drifted southern more from SC to GA. Can Florida be far behind? This is just awful.