smoke & fire

Thanks to everyone for their positive thoughts and prayers for my friend Taryn over the last couple of days. The Trabing Fire (pictured) which affected her is now 100% contained and she is back in her HOME although with no power or water. The fire came to 40 feet from their house. I spoke to her this morning and although she sounds exhausted, they are relived to have their home and everyone safe.

Yesterday was a very strange weather day here in central CA. It started out with high temps and strange clouds. My friend commented how it reminded her of the weather she used to experience when she lived on OH before a thunder storm and Greg agreed. We had brunch and did some quick shopping and then exited to thunder and lightning. We drove home watching the show in the sky and got some rain by the time we got home. The temps had dropped by about 20 degrees but slowly climbed back up to 90 or so. It was pretty muggy and we were relieved that there had been some rain but that relief was short lived when we discovered that lightning strikes were responsible for a handful of new fires. Greg saw one of them on his way to San Jose this morning and when I got in my car it was literally coated with ash. I noted that at one point today the sky above us was clear but we were completely surrounded by smoke. That didn't last long though as the wind picked up bring more smoke into the area.

I just downloaded the most current map from CAL Fire which shows the fires in relation to us...
we are indicated by the blue "X".. you can click on the image to see a larger version on my Flickr.

Looks like its going to be another week full of inhalers and stinging eyes. My thoughts and prayers are going out to those directly affected and the the many, many firefighters who are risking their lives to keep everyone safe.