That was my first thought when I took Jessie out a while ago.
In the winter, when we have a night that’s cool (in the 50s F) as opposed to cold (30s F), you’ll smell the smoke in the air as some folks light off their fireplaces instead of turning on the furnace. (I know, it’s not -30F like in Vermont, but it’s cold for LA.) But today it was almost 105F here and it’s still in the low 80s, so who’s the yahoo with the fireplace?
It only took a second to realize the truth. That wasn’t wood smoke — it was grass & brush.
The good news (or really, really bad news) was that I couldn’t hear any sirens. If it were a big brush fire anywhere within ten miles, we would have heard lots and lots of fire trucks. But if a brush fire had just now started and was near enough for me to smell, the first engines might not be rolling yet…
A quick look around at the hills showed no obvious flames or orange glows (just the blue-white glow from the football game over at the high school), nor any obvious smoke clouds. Once inside, a quick check of the local news sites showed that there had been a small (three or four acres) fire about five miles away, but they had hit it hard and got it out before it could spread much.
Brush fires are always an issue in California, and this year could be a doozie. So far all of the really big fires have been up in Northern California, but it’s just a matter of time before we have them in SoCal this year. In the third year of a historic drought, there’s a lot of brush to burn. Meanwhile, the hundreds and hundreds of fires to date this year have already exhausted the funds budgeted to fight them, despite the fact that the heart of the fire season is just getting here.
The drought’s getting critical (there are already small towns in central California that haven’t had water AT ALL in weeks), the temperatures are rising (on average, in this part of the world it’s the hottest year since they started keeping records in the mid-1800s), and the hoped-for El Niño rains are now being described as “unlikely.”
The next time I smell smoke, the proper first thought won’t be “Who’s using their fireplace?”
The correct questions will be, “How big? How close? Where are the critical documents? Where’s that bug-out plan? How soon do we have to start packing the car and how much time do we have?”
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 
To be fair, people are already using their fireplaces here, and it’s not ever the official end to swimming season until next weekend.
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Yeah, it’s scary. Actually, the one thing that concerned me about moving to L.A. wasn’t the potential earthquakes, but how CA might be faring environmentally in ten years time.
But then, I lived in OK for 4 years, KY for 5 we had tornados and rain-a-plenty. In FL you have hurricanes. In the north-east you have 100ft of snow every winter. Frankly, anywhere north of 45N becomes a semi-arctic wasteland from at least December to February.
(It snowed in Wisconsin Friday night)
Earth, wind, fire and water. You pays your moneys and you takes your choice.
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Here the big difference to me is the lack of any warning for SoCal disasters. A 6.9M or 7.5M quake hits and you have zero-point-zero seconds of warning. A big brusher starts up in your area and you might have a couple hours to pack the cars, but you might have five minutes. With snow, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, thunderstorms, you generally have The Weather Channel warning you about the odds three or four days out and getting increasingly frantic as the time nears. if Jim Cantore shows up in your town, you’re in deep guano. jim never is here for an earthquake.
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You’re absolutely right. Especially about Jim Cantore. He showed up in Louisville when I lived there – we were expecting some heavy rain – and we knew we were in trouble LOL
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