Wildfires

On the day of my aunt's memorial, it is hotter than Hades, and the sky is burning. We head to the coast. Everyone else is thinking the same. It's a parking lot in Pacifica. But at least there was less smoke along the ocean. We're hours late for the memorial.

There was a fire in Terra Linda last night. Probably the fresh smoke I was smelling. This current wave of smoke is from more than the Lake County Jerusalem fire, northeast of Clearlake. I couldn't even see Mt. Tam from the East Bay. Huge roils of smoke are seething all up and down the coast—to at least Santa Cruz and beyond.

"Smoke from a series of Northern California wildfires on Saturday set a thick haze over Sonoma County and reached south to much of the Bay Area. The air around Santa Rosa smelled of smoke Saturday and visibility was greatly  diminished. Local fire officials said the smoke wasn’t due to fire activity in the county. Northern California wildfires blamed for hazy skies over Bay Area

The air is contaminated by huge fires in Northern California and beyond. There are reports that it's hazy in Santa Rosa, and you can can smell the fires burning. In Modesto there was so much smoke, it was as if the fire were burning right on Hwy 99. All that smoke slowly being pushed south by gentle winds. The wind has shifted and we're getting the brunt of it now. The smoke is supposed to be even worse tomorrow.

Fire officials said the blazes responsible for the smoke weren’t in Lake County, where nearly 150 square miles of grass and woodland have been on fire in recent weeks. Instead, the shift in winds overnight Friday pushed the heavy smoke from several fires in far northern Trinity County into the area.

When I came down from Canada, I saw how bad it was all the way down, especially in Oregon and on the California borders. Wildfires from British Columbia to Napa are raging through the night. Weird to think that we are breathing in the carbon residue from trees dying in the Trinity Alps. 

Today, the gentle wind currents brought more smoke down from Lake County. It was smoky in SF all day, and also in Oakland once I got home. Even Monterey and Santa Cruz are blanketed in thick smoke.There is that orange alpenglow in the sky, casting purple shadows on the landscape as the sun sinks lower on the horizon. Surrealistic landscape. On the day we said goodbye to my aunt Jane.

8/15/2015

added & revised 8/17