Hazy Here – Infernos In NorCal

Here we had a bit of haze, a bit of smoke, enough to make the sunset orange-ish.

There are still three major fires in Southern California and a handful of smaller ones. The closest and biggest is about fifty miles to our northeast. All of them are still less than 20% contained, but burning off into some extremely steep, rugged, and empty terrain with few structures, homes, or power lines which would need protecting. Given how thinly stretched the air resources and ground troops and equipment are, they may just have to burn for a few days or few weeks.

Up north, in the Bay Area and over toward Davis and Sacramento, a series of large storms went through a few days ago with thousands upon thousands of lightning strikes into tinder dry terrain. It seems like everything is burning up there. The only county anywhere from San Jose to San Francisco to Oakland to Sacramento to Reno that doesn’t have out of control brush fires is San Francisco County, because it’s about 99% urban.

Elsewhere there are tens of thousands of people evacuated, and it might be 100,000+ by now. Nearer and dearer to my heart, tonight we’ve been watching the webcam (here) that looks over the Lick Observatory. It’s not looking good.

(Image: University of California Observatories / Lick Observatory)

The big dome’s the 3-meter telescope, with five others scattered around the peak near it. While the original observatory was build in 1888, the first observatory built on a mountain top, the current telescopes are still in use constantly.

Given all of the homes and lives threatened, I don’t know how many resources CalFire can put into defending Lick. Let’s pray that it’s enough.