CA Wildfires

[Atlas]

My little town is starting to look extremely gloomy due to all of these wildfires. It seriously looks like something out of a movie here. You walk outside and you can see hardly as far as you could if the smoke weren't so thick.

It's the end of the world! :P

A number of wildfires burned across Northern California late last week, and over the weekend. Firefighters have them all under control now, with the largest, the Humboldt Fire, now 90% contained with 74 homes destroyed, and at least $11 million in damage. Residents began returning to their homes to see what survived, and what could be salvaged. (16 photos total)


Anyways, here's a link to our plight here in Cali.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/california_fires.html

[Matron]

That looks really bad, I hope they stay far enough from you and the other Cali folks on here to keep yall out of danger.

I'm glad the worst I have to worry about is thunderstorms, droughts, and air thick enough to drink in summer.

[Electric Banana]

I want to say this first, being that forest fires are something that we spent a fair time studying at my university in the Geography department... A lot of people have weird notions about California, and that it's "always burning"...:

California has a "let it burn" policy. Because of the natural patterns of forests, fire is needed to sustain the life of that forest. For that reason, the state of California has noted that sometimes the forests just need to burn... They are in a sense controlled (usually don't burn down any houses, though my friend Brittany's parent's house burned down last year in a forest fire in Southern California)... So these fires in Humboldt are a big deal, destroying so many houses (and my cousin lives up there, goes to college somewhere up there, I'm going to have to check up on him!).

Most of California is affected by these fires, but no one suffers more than the whole central valley area (Sacramento all the way down to Bakersfield), because we're in an "airshed" (Sierra Nevadas are too high for air to be blown out of the valley, the only relief is rain, and most of the central valley averages 9-14 inches of rain a year)... Last year there were two massive fires, one in the Morgan Hill area, the other in Susanville, and our sky over Fresno was this insane bright orange. I might have to sneak outside at sunset and see if the sky is as bizarre as it was a few days ago...:

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh9/electricbanana/sunset06222008.jpg
Sunset over Caruthers, CA on the 23rd.
Magenta!?

[Atlas]

We can barely even see the sun.

[Electric Banana]

The sun here is super bright...but not in the usual way...more like it looks like a nuclear blast. yikes. Still not sunset time, but they sky is a bizarre shade of pinkish-orange. Note, I'm about 190 miles south of you, Atlas.

Edit: Here's the sun setting an hour or so after I made this comment:

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh9/electricbanana/sunset2.jpg
http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh9/electricbanana/sunset.jpg