Orange skies across California as wildfire smoke blankets state

The Bay Area’s bizarre conditions — with a thick blanket of smoke atop the natural layer of morning fog — confounded the National Weather Service’s forecasting models on Wednesday.

The result, meteorologist Drew Peterson acknowledged, is that the predicted high of 86 degrees in Santa Rosa is way off the mark.

At about 1 p.m., the temperature for Santa Rosa, actually measured at the county airport, was 60 degrees, and Peterson said he would be surprised to see it go higher than the mid-60s.

“The forecast is wrong,” he said. “It’s just because the weather models don’t include smoke.”

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