Why was the moon orange last night in New York?
NEW YORK -- You may have noticed the moon looked a little different Thursday night in the New York City area. Many people were asking, why was the moon orange or pink?
The moon's reddish color was due to a smoke plume from wildfires burning in Central Canada.
Wildfire smoke making skies hazy over NYC
Smoke from the wildfires is traveling down from Quebec, where it was mixed with smoke from fires in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The effects have been reduced visibilities, less than stellar air quality, and fiery sunsets.
There has been another, more interesting effect of those fires though. For the last several nights the moon has appeared to look orange, which is a stark contrast from its normal milky complexion.
This sudden lunar shift to a Halloween-esque tone can be directly tied to the wildfires, as the dust particles from the blazes combine with the moon's light, essentially becoming refracted or scattered about. This rare occurrence has been a delight to many moon gazers, displaying one of the few benefits of wildfires.
Looking ahead, the smoke plume should continue pushing east and clear the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area over the weekend.
This is nothing like the wildfire smoke we dealt with in 2023. Luckily, this time the smoke is being carried by upper air winds, so ground level air quality (AQI) isn't that bad.
August super blue moon
Monday's full moon will be a rare occurrence: a supermoon blue moon.
The supermoon blue moon combines a supermoon, which appears 14x larger and 30% brighter than usual, and a blue moon, which is the second full moon in a month.
Twenty years can pass between one supermoon blue moon to the next, although the average timespan is ten years.
Another way a blue moon is defined is when two full moons occur within one month. After this supermoon & blue moon combo, three other supermoons are on the horizon through November.
Effects on Earth
Blue moons and supermoons both produce wide reaching effects on the Earth.
For example, when supermoons occur, they are the brightest full moons of the year. This is because of the close proximity between the moon and Earth during these periods. That close proximity also creates higher tide cycles that come in with much more voracity than usual, known as Spring Tides or Perigean Tides. It is during these times that the threat of coastal flooding becomes enhanced, especially when there are storms offshore. Coincidently, Hurricane Ernesto will be passing offshore this weekend into early next week just as the supermoon blue moon occurs. This will likely result in some coastal flooding at all Tri-State beaches.
What's in a name?
Besides being a supermoon blue moon this August, typically, the full moon that occurs in August is known as the Sturgeon Moon. The name derived from the Native Americans who fished for this prehistoric species of fish in the Great Lakes. Now a rarity, the Sturgeon was once an abundant species, and August was the month when their numbers were most plentiful.
