Smoke Gets In Our Skies

Raymond Chandler wrote a great short story about life in LA during a Santa Ana wind, "Red Wind." It's been a while since I've read it, so I don't remember if he mentioned the fires that seem to be the inevitable result. Perhaps fewer people had built homes in the hills then. But right now, in areas where houses have been built since before Chandler's time, people are being burned out of their homes, and wildlife areas are being destroyed.

Fortunately, our home is not in a danger zone, but if you live anywhere in the LA basin right now, you are probably getting a gray snow of ash on everything. The air smells as if you've got your head up a chimney. And the day has been darkened by smoke.

The photo above was taken many miles from any active fire, looking southwest (toward the coast), at two in the afternoon. The brown in the sky is smoke, and that blue stripe is what the day should have looked like. It seemed more like dusk than the middle of the afternoon.

For information on the fires : LAFD and this Fire Map.*

*This link has been updated -- the earlier map link was not regularly updated.