...
I can't stand it.
We have two humongous fires they didn't even mention up here in the northernmost portion of the state. Happy Camp Complex, 115,000 acres, and July Complex, nearly 60,000 acres. They have been burning for six weeks, making me much, much, much crazier than before, but the King fire went from a piddly little thing to 70,000 acres in — what? — three days? Four?
For as dry as it is up east of the Coastal Range right now, we have gotten rain while the rest of the state is in a very bad drought. Even when the Sacramento area gets record rains, it is dry as powdered bones this time of year... but it hasn't had any precipitation to speak of in years. Understory dies back big time every year, but in the drought it's radically, radically worse, and these dead bushes and weed trees that live under and around the conifer are known to forestry types as "fuels" even in wet years.
The trees themselves were struggling even before the drought set in. Add to that the fact that most of the conifer in that part of the Sierra are pine, full of really marvelously-flammable oils and sap and just up and explode in fires, and they could be evacuating the Capitol any minute now.
BB2's probably been out catching moody smoke pics all evening....
always and any time....
