Orange Skies

Seems that all of California is burning. We’ve had smoky skies, on and off, but mostly on, for the past several weeks.<br />n<br />nSeveral weekends ago, there were thunderstorms that swept over most of the state. As a result, there were lots of “dry” lightenting strikes nearly everywhere, but mostly in the central valley, in the foothills and in the mountains. Dry strikes are when lightening hits the ground and starts a fire, but there is no accompanying rain to quickly extinguish the flames.<br />n<br />nAs a result, something like 1500 individual fires broke out, quickly using up fire fighting resources.<br />n<br />nIt’s amazing how the smoke has come into the bay area and settled in like a blanket. Some mornings, you can actually wake up to what seems to be a fireplace burning, or a campfire. The sun, and the sky in general, especially in the mornings or during sunset, appears to be a orangish-red color. Sunshine in the middle of the day, on the really sooty days, is even tinged toward the orange.<br />n<br />nNews reports have been talking about people who are becoming affected by the soot, and I fear that I may be one of those. My throat has been scratchy for the past several days, and I wonder whether I caught a small scale bug of some sort, or it’s indeed a symptom of our poor air quality. I’m leaning toward the latter.<br />n<br />nHere’s hoping we get a bit of relief in the weather conditions, and they start getting an upper hand on those conflagrations.