Minimizing Smoke For Night and Landscape Photography

Wildfire smoke in the Eastern Sierra

Late August and early September can be particularly risky times for landscape photography, as vegetation dries out and increases the risk and intensity of potential wildfires. If summer is when you have personal or family time to travel and photograph landscapes and night skies, you may want to have the ability to adjust your itineraries to minimize smoke. Webcams such as the ones at Mono Lake can help you assess current conditions, and National Weather Service forecasts can show current satellite images showing smoke. Weather apps can show you wind forecasts, so you can estimate where the smoke might go in a few hours.

I just found out that my favorite snow (and skiing) forecast service OpenSnow.com has partnered with OpenSummit.com to provide their All Access subscribers with smoke maps and smoke forecasts!

OpenSnow All Access subscribers have access to OpenSummit.com smoke maps and forecasts/

One type of smoke forecast available at https://opensummit.com/map is a ground-level smoke forecast:

With the All Access OpenSnow & OpenSummit subscription, you can see a ground level smoke forecast

Ground level forecasts can highlight where lateral visibility may be reduced, such as by smoke trapped in a valley by an inversion later.

The other map available is a smoke sky visibility map:

Sky smoke forecast

That can help predict where the sky will be obscured by overhead smoke:

By using these two types of smoke maps, you can consider moving to a location with better landscape and sky visibility. If you have access to higher elevations nearby, sometimes smoke settles into valleys in the evenings and overnight. Combine that with getting farther form the main plume of smoke from an active wildfire, and you may be able to significantly upgrade your visibility for landscape and night sky photography, without too much driving.

There are OpenSnow and Open Summit apps, and the OpenSummit app is where I found the animated 18-hour smoke forecast:

Open Summit IOS screen looking at the 18-hour smoke forecast.

I’ve been a free user of Open Snow for some time, but the new Open Summit smoke forecast encouraged me to upgrade to the All Access yearly subscription, which includes use of all features in the Open Snow and Open Summit mobile apps, including the 18-hour smoke forecast.

I’m still getting up to speed on the features, but the satisfaction guarantee with the offer of a refund if not satisfied enabled me to subscribe in spite of the lack of a free trial. The annual subscription is $19, less than $2/month, and to get a $5 discount off your first year to make it $14, use discount code RC052YNA. I couldn’t immediately find where to enter a discount code in the IOS app, so I went to my PC and subscribed there (where there was highlighted text enabling me to click and enter a discount code).

Moon over the Minarets as wildfire smoke settles in cooler evening temperatures.