Fiery California

A quick update - we are not close to any of the many wildfires that are burning in South California.

Being new here, I didn't even realize that it was wildfire season. We went to SeaWorld in San Diego on Saturday. On the way there, we looked at the houses built into the hills, so close to the trees in the forest, and I wondered why they built them that way.

On Sunday morning, back home, we heard the wind howling through the fireplace, and guessed that it was the notorious Santa Ana winds, coming from the desert. The farmers market was not festive as usual, everybody seemed to be in a hurry to go home and get out of the dry, hot, wind.

Sunday afternoon, we started hearing about wildfires. That evening, we smelled smoke outside. I thought it must be a barbeque, because I couldn't believe that we would smell fires that were atleast forty miles away, even though that's what Kiran suspected.

Monday night, there was no mistaking that it was the smoke from the fires. There were fires burning east of us, and the winds were going west and blowing the smoke right over us.

So now we have wildfires to the north, wildfires to the east, and wildfires to the south. The sky is grey even though it's a sunny day. Summy's class has stopped going out for playground time to avoid the smoke, and is indoors watching movies instead.

The winds are gone now, and we hope the fires burn themselves out soon.