Wordless Wednesday - Smog-choked Shanghai

Day breaks over Pudong
Shanghai, China
May 2007
[Click to enlarge]

Quick note: This is the last sky-themed photo from this week's Thematic Photographic challenge. Click here to see where it all began - and to get in on the action. I'll post a new photo and theme later this evening, so please be sure to check back.

If Beijing's air is anything like Shanghai's - and news reports suggest it is - then it's going to be a fun time for the world's Olympic athletes later this summer. The air is so thick with coal-fed pollution that you can practically taste it when you first walk outside.

Rumor has it that just breathing the air is akin to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. Either way, it's not the world's most environmentally happy place.

Those clouds you see? Not clouds. The first 15 or so degrees of the horizon are basically smog. I took this shot at 5:42 a.m. from the 66th floor of my hotel. The sun had already risen, but had not yet cleared the smog. The good news is you get a pretty spectacular sunrise when it finally burns through the atmospheric muck (see here). The bad news? Well, you may die young.

Your turn: Your most memorable image of the sky was...? (And click here if you want to submit a sky-themed photo.)