MetService meteorologist Alwyn Bakker said this was because the particles from fire were scattering light.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why sunsets in general are redder is because the light from the sun is essentially scattering differently than when it\u2019s directly overhead.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when it\u2019s directly overhead, we get the blue light that is being scattered by the atmosphere. At sunset, sunrise, the angle has changed, so we\u2019re getting the redder light.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith all of the ash and smoke from all of the fires, things are getting scattered more. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo we get those really incredibly red, incredibly vivid sunsets when that kind of stuff happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bakker said if you imagine a beam of light moving through the air and when it encounters things it can bounce off or interact with them, changing the light pathway.<\/p>\n
A closeup of Sunday’s sunset in Havelock North, caused by the smoke and ash from the Tongariro National Park fire. Photo \/ Akhill T John<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think of a rainbow, that\u2019s where all of the light splits out and different colours of light split out to different points on the rainbow.<\/p>\n
\u201c[But] the red light splits out further and bends more than the other colours of light.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when the sun\u2019s at a really low angle, we\u2019re seeing that light that\u2019s been split out the most and when you\u2019ve got a lot of particles in the atmosphere, like the ash from the fires or the smoke, that is splitting out the red light more.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Hawke\u2019s Bay Regional Council spokeperson said the council was monitoring air quality at its stations to assess any potential impacts from the fire. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt this stage, monitoring stations in Napier and Hastings have not recorded any increase in PM10 or PM2.5 levels (the fine particles in smoke and dust that can affect air quality and health when inhaled).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to monitor and review air quality data over the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MetService meteorologist Alwyn Bakker said this was because the particles from fire were scattering light. \u201cThe reason why…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25629,665,1561,14772,16651,20830,2079,1976,1362,15399,3556,111,43,139,69,8143,254,15406,9877,544,42903,210,46029,32951],"class_list":["post-127162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-alpine","tag-around","tag-bay","tag-burning","tag-bush","tag-eerie","tag-fire","tag-hawkes","tag-made","tag-massive","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-park","tag-photos","tag-red","tag-skies","tag-some","tag-sunset","tag-through","tag-tongariro","tag-turns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}