The Day Fire - Sunday
john posted in other on September 18th, 2006
Original full-size picture from Nasa here… - Large file warning.
With the earthquakes, mud slides, and runaway celebrities California gets a little exciting from time to time. This weekend, the Day fire covered the county in smoke.
Californians take fires mostly in stride, covering their pools, moving their horses to safety, keeping indoors, and going about their business as usual. This fire doubled in size on Saturday-Sunday, taking 30-50,000 more acres depending on when you asked. Chaparral is what’s burning, a mix of shrubs and grass and the occasional oak tree. With no rain since May, and humidity in the teens, it is dry out there.
Driving past it Saturday night, looking up at the Los Padres mountains, the red glow looked quite a lot like the fires of Mordor, and Sunday morning we woke to an evil orange light that lasted all day. Inside the smoke area, it seemed quite apocalyptic, though as you can see from the picture, the other 15 million Southern Californians had clear skies. To give you the scale of the satellite picture, LA is about 100 miles from Santa Barbara, and the Channel islands are 35 miles out to sea. They are saying this fire may be burning itself out without significant damage to buildings, but we won’t know for a few more days.
In nearby Ojai, the Eastern edge of town was evacuating, but these shots were taken on the West side. Ash was falling wherever the smoke was seen. In Santa Barbara it was too smoky to go outside.
Ash on a car.
Afternoon sun.
Topa Topa mountains
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