Fires

So it's like a chinook eh?

At least that's what I thought when I decided to look up what a Santa Ana wind was on Sunday. See, I'd hearing about them in the news all day Saturday and it seemed like these winds were something special. Well, it turns out that they are. Technically they are the same things as a chinook, just really warm dry air that comes out of the mountains. Unlike chinooks, the name is kind of lame in my opinion, but they are also coming down out of the east, unlike from the west in Alberta. The winds really do get strong here as well, I was almost blown into the other lane while driving yesterday.

So if you mix those factors with the extreme drought conditions and highly flammable vegetation around here and you get a good chance for fires.

It was a bit shocking to see the amount of smoke coming over the hills as I drove to work yesterday. That turned out to be part of my reasoning for turning around before I got there. The other part was the huge area that was being warned for potential evacuations (which they did later in the day) that crosses the my route to San Diego. Ultimately the university ended up being closed by the early afternoon and it has yet to reopen as the fires get worse and worse around the city.

To get an idea what's going on down there check out this map that was setup by the local National Public Radio station. Frankly I think it's one of the best uses of google maps that I have ever seen.
View Larger Map

As for us, we're fine. There is one fire in our county, about 30 miles away, but it seems to be one of the ones that is more contained at this point in time, plus it doesn't seem to be as windy today, which makes things a lot safer. The stupid part about it is that this fire was apparently deliberately set. Some people are just fucking assholes!

Anyway, I just thought I'd let you guys know what's going on with us. Things here seem to be normal, I just happen to have a couple of days off work. And who said that there is no magical colours in fall in SoCal?