There is a thin pall of smoke lying in the air here. Sunday we had rain, but it is the dry season, so yesterday was beautiful. But the brushfires in surrounding counties are conspiring to do us in. One of my cow-orkers called in, saying the smoke is bothering her too much to come in yet - ironic, since she is the office smoker and normally smokes like a chimney, even smoking inside the building when she thinks she can get away with it.
Otherwise the weather would be gorgeous, a minimum of clouds and high right around 80F.
Still, it smells like someone just put out a campfire right nearby.
I well remember trying to vacation in western Colorado when Wyoming’s Yellowstone was on fire. We’d pull up to a scenic overlook, there’d be the etched plate with an outline of the mountains there for identification, and we’d look out on nothing but haze. Ended up driving all the way to eastern New Mexico just trying to escape that horrid airgoo.
It plagues us here in south Texas every year too as farmers in Mexico annually burn off their crops. They’ll show it on the Weather Channel, just a big ol’ wide trail of smoke moving from one country to another. Ugh.
Which side of which bay are you on, Wile E? Every Tampa bay area county, except for Pinellas, has fires, and all told maybe 100-150 fires out there. The smoke is coming from those and even the Ofeefenokee (sp?) fires are getting blamed.
I work in Pinellas and habitate in Hillsborough. It’s gnarly in both places.
Yes, just smoke. Pinellas is probably too densely populated to get much, if anything, in the way of wildfires. If we have fires it’s mostly going to be houses and business in flames. The fire in Hillsborough is in or near Plant City, which is fairly rural.
All from the same NYT article today (bolding mine)…
*In all, there were at least 260 fires burning Monday in Florida, covering about 19,000 acres. Nearly 50 of those started Sunday, about half of them caused by lightning from a line of thunderstorms that moved through the state too quickly to quench the blazes, Harrell said.
Firefighters in Grand Marais, Minn., called for reinforcements as a wildfire continued to burn through the northeastern Minnesota forests, damaging 40 buildings and pushing about 100 people from their homes.
<snip>
The fire advanced into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northeastern Minnesota on Sunday. Officials ordered people to leave the vicinity.
<snip>
In southeastern Georgia, three weeks after the state’s largest wildfire on record ignited near Waycross, sustained winds of 20 mph from the northeast pushed the fire deeper into the Okefenokee Swamp, giving firefighters a chance to fortify fire breaks.*
Actually I remember driving by some brush fires in Pinellas several years ago. It was along Gandy Blvd, kind of scary seeing fires right along the roadside. That area may have been built up since then but there are still some brushy areas hereabouts.
We get that smoke smell in the fall, when the leaves are all crackly and brown and the air is crisp. There are a lot of pines in my neighborhood, and a good deal of wind. I love to walk outside for hours when it’s like that.
