A million acres have burned in California in the past week:
Here is a link to Bay Area road information, showing closures, just in case anyone needs to navigate NorCal tonight: https://twitter.com/511SFBay/status/1297357436953620481?s=20
We’ve got large fires on 3 sides of the Bay Area right now, but things are looking up. It looks like the lines have held and the crews are making progress. Fire crews have been coming in from other countries and states, which really helps.
I’ve been playing incessant purple air tag with the air quality. When it drops below 50 ( be sure and use the LRAPA conversion on the Map Data Layer settings if you use that site, otherwise it will overestimate AQI for smoke ), the windows open. I don’t have AC and I DO have a unenclosed sun room, so heat has been an issue lately. The AQI keeps shifting all over the place in my location and surprisingly quickly as it can be hit from multiple directions. So I find myself checking the damn thing incessantly and constantly opening and closing windows when I’m home, hoping for a little relief.
My office in the Sacramento area has been closed yesterday and today, due to poor air quality. With COVID-19 we’ve all been told to work from home as much as possible anyway, but as a defense contractor we’re considered essential, so people who absolutely have to go to the office has been able to until now. COVID hasn’t closed our office, but the wildfires have.
I tried to buy an air purifier last weekend, but of course they are all sold out locally. I ordered one from Amazon, but it’s not scheduled to arrive until next Monday. I’d hope the smoke will have cleared up by then, but at least I’ll have one next time. I’m not entirely sure how well they work on smoke, but I imagine they’ll at least filter out the bigger particles.
Soon as it became obvious this was bad on the 19th, the first thing I did was order two from Amazon. I should have done it after that last hellish smoke shroud in 2018 and I thought about it. But hey, how often could this scenario repeat itself? We’ve never had weeks of “worst in the world” air quality in the SF Bay Area like that before, I said.
This time was what convinced me that this is quite possibly the new normal. We could easily end up with shit air quality for weeks on end every couple of years or so, so I might as well bite the bullet and start spending a little money to mitigate it.
One of the fires I’m concerned about is at Point Reyes National Seashore. From the incident map it looks like one of my favorite spots in the world – a section of the Sky Trail through a deep forest like a corridor of green – is right in the middle of the fire zone. Likely it will be months before things get back to normal enough for me to see what survived in that area.
Seems ironic how many trees are still standing around my friend’s former home.
Santa Cruz county posted a tool that shows property damage on a map. I thought some of you might find it useful.
Yeah, very rare. I remember when I was out in California (with occasional temporary residence in Oregon) between 2007 and 20014, I think I experienced one t-storm in August of 2008. I spent two summers out there prior to that in the 1980s and 90s and never saw storms in summer. That was pretty much it. Only the winter storms that slosh through that area between December and March.
Coastal California is usually very pleasant, even a bit chilly in summer. It has to be rather warm and humid to generate a thunderstorm with the kind of static electricity that started these fires, and the climate in that area - at least historically - isn’t conducive to that kind of storm outbreak.
I was wondering about heat, as this will be an issue as you get into September, if not already. Temps can climb past 100 depending on where one is, particularly away from the coast. Gilroy gets to 100-105 easily.
Yeah I was explaining to someone on the east coast what happened here with the fires. Most of CA is always dry during the summer - so that is not new.
There are hardly ever thunder storms over the SF Bay Area this time of year - so that is what changed. I think there was a Pacific hurricane off Mexico the week before the fires started, and it moved up along the coast and then broke down before getting to CA, but still deposited a lot of moisture in the air currents, and as it moved north along the coast created a weather anomaly with the storms. The stubborn high pressure system over the Great Basin (Nevada) helped pull things north along the coast.
So, the usual summer had already dried out the vegetation, then we had a heat wave, then the dry lightening storms, et voila! a major problem. The other issue is the fires started in mostly wild areas where there are no people close-by to stomp them out, so they just ran wild.
Pie Ranch near the San Mateo - Santa Cruz county line, a favorite snack stop on coastal bike trips, was destroyed. 
It’s been in the 100s regularly since June, maybe late May. It’s a hot year.
That’s insane. Are we talking about further inland like Vacaville to Sacramento, or the Bay Area itself?
I believe Sunny is in Morgan Hill, which definitely gets hot regularly.
Air quality much better today. We even opened our windows, a big relief, and hung out some clothes.
T-storms are rare anytime around here, at least compared to the East and Midwest. Last weekend’s storm didn’t cause any further problems, at least. And the weather is cooler, with high humidity near the fires.
Hope the trees in Big Bend made it through okay.
Now if we could just get some Louisiana rain on the California fire, everyone would be happy.
I was in Morgan Hill, now I’m over closer to Livermore, which is also the Devil’s Armpit.
That would make the Modesto area The Devil’s Taint.
We had a stretch of 100-105 with lows 82-85. Right now, it’s trending mid to high 90s with lows 60-65 so that’s some relief.
I’m in Sacramento, and about two weeks ago, it was well over 100 every day for a week or more straight. It’s not quite usually THAT hot here, but I’ve seen over 110 in previous summers here.