Smoke + Heat = Dangerous Weather

Yesterday was a miserable day. Triple digit temperatures and lots of smoke in the air made it very hard to do anything outside. And today promises more of the same. More heat and more smoke. It's getting hard to breathe at all. My voice sounds like I have a bad cold with the stuffy nose, watery eyes and cough along with it. But it's not a cold. It's the bad air we're breathing.

And up in the mountains to the North apparently has had increased winds as well. At 2am this morning they called for mandatory evacuations of the communities near the Butte Complex Fire. The California Fire News blog posted an update at 3am with more news of the evacuation orders. The fire is dangerously close to homes in that area now and all residents are being ordered out. An evacuation center for the people has been set up in Oroville and facilities have been set up for the evacuated animals. The Sacramento Bee has an article about the dangerous situation on the Butte Complex this morning as well.

As for the smoke in the air, the Sacramento Bee also has an article up this morning about the nasty air we're experiencing and it's apparently nothing new: "Smoke is normal - for 1800s". It's an interesting read.

On a side note, the California Fire News blog hadn't been getting regular updates the way it normally had. On Sunday evening, the fellow who "owns" that blog posted an apology for the lack of news. He's been out on the firelines on water tender duty!

The Modis Rapid Response gallery page had two images that I hadn't posted yet. The first has a time stamp of 7/6 and the 2nd one is time stamped 7/7.

According to Cal Fire, there are still 330 fires burning around the state. With the triple digit temperatures the weatherman is predicting, its going to be hard for those folks out on the fire lines. We need some cooler, wetter weather all over the state. Soon.

Other Stuff
The InSessions message boards have been down for about a day now. Rumor has it that a hacker attacked the InSessions and TruTV boards. At least that is what some are saying on a couple of other message boards. Whether or not the cause for the boards being down is a hacker, we won't know until the boards are put back online.

I guess I'll throw in a bit of humor for a closing note today.... Then maybe I'll go surfing around the net and see if I can find some good news for a change.

more cat pictures