Visit the kelpforest....

Mustard
Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
30 August 2009

Mustard is a non-native plant, and the sky is colored by a combo of L.A. smog and a forest fire, but together it makes for a good picture, I guess...

( More Station Fire... )

Yeeks. I saw a very odd looking cloud out my office window so I took a picture of it (I'll add it here once I download my camera). There's been a fire (the Morris fire) since a couple of days ago in the San Gabriel Mountains above Azusa, but this was a bit farther west. Turns out it's the Station Fire, above La Cañada Flintridge, that started yesterday afternoon. There's also a fire in Rancho Palos Verdes that started overnight; this is a bit more atypical as RPV is pretty well surrounded by city - it's the big hilly penninsula on the south end of Santa Monica Bay, and just west of the harbor where I spent most of the morning yesterday, with a lot of affluent neighborhoods and golf courses. However, it's 70% contained already. Plus another one out near Hemet.

It's getting so a red-flag warning means an almost instant wildfire. When I went to the fire blog I usually check, earlier in the week, there hadn't been an update since the 19th and it's usually updated several times a day, depending on fire activity - the guy must have been on vacation. Seems to be back this morning, though. In any case, it all makes for terrible air quality, so I've been after runsamuck to stay indoors as much as possible - although the Air Quality Mgt. District map says it's only moderate, except in Banning (Hemet fire?).

We had a two or three weeks there where you would have thought we were back in April or May - the June gloom came back and sometimes it never cleared up the entire day, around 20 degrees below normal in places. On Tuesday,that abruptly changed, although seems like it seldom gets as hot as yesterday without there being Santa Ana conditions. Let's hope those stay away. *Looks out window* Hmm, may have spoke too soon - yesterday the wind was still coming from the ocean, but it looks as if it's changed direction.

Smoke from the Santa Barabara fire. We heard later that even downtown SB was very close to a mandatory evacuation.

Oddly, I thought the horizon was tilted in this photo, but when I went to straighten it, it really wasn't that far off (less than a degree).

Wildfire smoke trail
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
6 May 2009

Did not realize there was a wildfire going on until I looked out the bedroom window and realized the sky was black.

Freeway Fire (in Anaheim Hills/Yorba Linda)
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
15 November 2008

Odd smells today.

Angus and I walked outside to wait for his bus - it was foggy, but vaguely smoky to me. Kind of strange with the damp air. Angus, however, said it smelled like "ground-up plants" and tried to bury his nose in my shoulder until the bus arrived.

Just now, around lunchtime, I had a whiff of something that smells like Elmer's glue. Then while washing my dishes, I got a stong smell of plastic or something electrical. VT and IT didn't smell anything and I know I don't have a good smeller. I know every once in a while it seems something goes haywire with my nose, and I spend an afternoon constantly smelling exhaust when none is present.

I must be having olfactory hallucinations.

Update: I was not imagining anything this morning at least; there was a fire at Camp Pendleton last night. No wonder runsamuck was wheezing last night.