This morning, a long red shadow stretched over my desk. The sun rose with the unsettling neon color of an orange highlighter; the shifty outdoor air, with its brownish-blue tint, subtly promising another day of toxic air, of sour smoke.

Like much of fire-ravaged Northern California, my hometown is engulfed in a smoggy haze. A week since the fires broke out, our air is not getting better. In fact, it has gotten worse. AirNow.gov, a website that charts air quality throughout every state, has designated huge swaths of California as having an Air Quality index of 193 — the top range of the “unhealthy zone” and only a few points away from the 200-point “very unhealthy zone” — the level where “everyone may experience more serious health effects.” The wildfires are polluting air more than 100 miles away.

Despite the official warnings, it has taken a while to fully digest how bad the smoke really is. After all, in the Bay Area, we are technically safe, and the more direct fallout of the recent fires has been horrifying — the death toll has reached 63 and will only swell. In view of that trauma, focusing on the creeping smoke dozens of miles downwind can feel oddly self-centering. But this smoke is affecting us.