Last Saturday (June 21) we had some big thunderstorms that came through our area, and the lightning strikes from the storms started fires in the wooded hills and mountains surrounding our town. In fact, lots of fires started - over 100 different fires in our county, and over 600 in this part of the state. By the middle of the week we felt like we were surrounded by fires, and the air had gotten so smoky that our air quality was considered hazardous. By Thursday the wind had started to pick up, but that was a mixed blessing… while the wind cleared out a lot of smoke and improved our air quality, it hampered the firefighters’ efforts to contain the fires. There have been a few homes lost on our area, with thousands of acres of forest burned. In some remote forest areas where there are no structures threatened the fire authorities are letting the fires burn because fire departments are spread thin and don’t have the resources to fight all of the fires. As of today most of the fires are not contained, and smoke continues to surround us… my son took the above photo from his front yard last night.
And our weather forecast for this weekend - thunderstorms.
‘Cause I’m smokin’, baby, baby
