California Wildfires

[Kimball]

As many of you know, the Witch fire in southern California has devastated the residents of San Diego. As such, my school has been temporarily evacuated for the poor air quality until this Sunday. The time period that I am home could be expended depending on just how long these fires last.

There are about 18 fires burning as far north as Marine boot camp Camp Pendleton and from Solano Beach to San Diego. Here's a map of where the fires currently are burning: California Wildfire Tracking Map 1.9 MB. You can see the two dots right above Oceanside, which are the two fires at Camp Pendleton, which is about 10 miles from my school.

Here is a satellite image of the smoke from these fires. About halfway down that image is a large red area which is the Witch fire. Yesterday morning I woke up to that cloud of haze and it was raining ash. Every time you took a step a cloud of ash would escape out of your footprints, which was actually pretty awesome looking.

I turned on the flash so that you could see the severity of the white ash rain we were getting that morning. That's basically the view from just outside my front door. Looks like a concentration camp when its foggy..lol. That orange streak in the background is the sun rising through the smokey haze. I woke up that morning and thought that someone had been smoking in my room, and my throat still hurts because of the high level of smoke in the air.

Well, that's pretty much my life's update right there. Enjoy.

[feneur]

That's a lot of smoke. On that satellite image it looks as if the smoke reaches far out over the Pacific, so it's gotta be a lot.

I hope things get better soon.

[Kimball]

My plane ticket is to fly back today, but the fires still aren't contained and there's no sign of smoke clearing.

[TheCobra1]

Wow! Looks cool, but I'm sure it looses the "coolness" after a couple of hours.

Ash is a good fertilizer, right?