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Whatever’s burning, it’s enough to rim the horizon with a rosy glow in all directions, but it’s not enough to choke the air with the smell of smoke. The paper mentions fires in surrounding counties — Napa, Solano, Mendocino. So the smoke is coming from far enough away that it can be seen only, and that helps. Some of the fires were apparently started by lightning during the night, but there was no sign of that here, either. It just shows how much our microclimates are interconnected, that we can know it’s happening without being directly affected.
The fact that the fires are so widespread does make us vulnerable, though, because typically crews from this area would go wherever the fires are. And there’s certainly enough dry growth here that a spark could be just the start of something huge and deadly. We are always one tiny tinder away from catastrophe, this time of year.
At least the weather has broken, for now, giving us a break from the heat. Temperatures were mild today, and it will be cool enough tonight to sleep much more comfortably than the last couple of nights. Not that I sleep all that much in the first place, of course, but if I were so inclined, it would be easier.
If today hadn’t been Sunday, I might have been tempted to get out in the yard and cut back some of the dry grass. I already have a sort of fire break around my house, with nothing high and dry growing too close. But the dry fields aren’t any farther away than the other side of my yard, so it would behoove me to get to work. It’s just that I’m not all that easily behooved.
So I spent another day mostly indoors, but at least today I wasn’t totally immobile. With the change in temperature, I was able to spend a good part of the day getting work done, and getting a head start on Monday’s duties. Well, that’s how I like to think of it. What I actually did was make up for some of the inactivity of the previous week, when I wasn’t in much of a mood to move. It all shakes out eventually, though. The work gets done. |
