Ever since several steamy summer days visiting Houston relatives in childhood, when I was frustratingly unable to see anything above but pale milky sky and not the cumulonimbus clouds making audible thunder, I’ve found urban haze—derived mainly from “wet” sulfate aerosols associated with pollution sources—to be nothing but ugly. I still do. Yet this is a cloud and sky site, and like it or not, pollution-related haze is part of that story. After over two decades of shooting weather photos, I finally got over the ugliness factor and did an aerial shot of it over Chicago, while flying through a deep boundary layer on approach to O’Hare Airport. For more insight into haze and how and where it develops, my friend and former colleague Steve Corfidi wrote a formal research paper on the topic (web version).
Chicago IL (24 Jun 15) Looking SE