K-Squared Ramblings

Clouds Replace Smoke

The change in the weather has brought in clouds today (Saturday), and even the occasional sprinkle of rain. It apparently helped slow the Santiago Fire considerably.

I went into work this morning to deal with some network problems (you may have noticed that this site was down for a while), then went over to the Spectrum to grab lunch and take a look at Leopard. (Incidentally, my plan seems to have failed: Amazon shipped the box yesterday, so I’ll have it in just a few days. And I’ll really want to put it on the PowerBook.) I went up to the top of the parking structure to take a look at what was visible.

There’s considerably less smoke than yesterday, and you can see the beginnings of a layer of haze below the hills. The cloud of smoke peeking out from behind the lower peak just in front of Saddleback stayed there, without getting visibly larger or smaller.

The air’s been relatively clear, except for the fertilizer smell when I walked out of the office. People were out shopping and sitting at outdoor tables. I saw one woman walk by with a face mask, but everyone else seemed to be taking things as normally as possible.

The apartment complex cleaned out the pool, which a few days ago had intricate patterns of ash lining the bottom.

They also finally cleared away the remnants of the tree that collapsed on Sunday. They chopped it up into smaller pieces, and moved it off the sidewalk, but left the stacks of logs, branches, the stump and piles of sawdust sitting on the lawn for the rest of the week. After a day or so, the sawdust turned almost bright orange. My best guess is that they ran the sprinklers.

Of the two co-workers who live out in Silverado, one cleared out on Tuesday, while the other stayed to help out with, well whatever he could. Putting out spot fires, rescuing animals, scouting. His wife has been sending out email updates whenever he manages to contact her. I ran into the one who evacuated at the office today (he frequently comes in on weekends). At the time, the prognosis didn’t look good, but now it sounds like the canyon homes were spared for another day.

It still wasn’t encouraging when, walking to the Corner Bakery at the Tustin Marketplace tonight, Katie and I were again able to see a red glow in the mountains. We went looking for a spot where I could both steady the camera and see the glow, and finally set it up on one of those waist-height light poles lining the entryways to the parking lot.

The glow brightened and dimmed several times while we paused.

This is a 10-second exposure taken around 8:50 PM. You can see how well-lit the parking lot is by looking at the trees. I suspect the Marketplace is the primary reason we can’t see as many stars from home as I’d like.

Shift

Winds have shifted northward. The good news: my workplace is no longer drenched in smoke from the Santiago Fire. I can see blue sky and wispy clouds, terrain back to the nearby hills, and the twin peaks of Saddleback rising above the smoke. Reportedly the northern peak (the one without all the radio transmission towers) has burned, though it’s hard to tell at this distance. The bad news: it’s sending the flames straight at Silverado Canyon, which was spared earlier this week when the fire raced past it eastward. Once again, worried about the co-worker who stayed behind and spent the last few days rescuing animals and relaying information.

A Breath of Fresh Air. Please.

The Santiago Fire has moved up into the mountains, raging through the Cleveland National Forest. The canyons are still under evacuation, but out here in the Saddleback Valley, it just looks like a really smoggy day. With yellower-than normal sunlight. It was actually cold this morning, for the first time in well over a week.

Things were just clear enough at home last night that we opened the windows for about an hour to air the place out. Then the smell of smoke started drifting in again.

Because there hasn’t been much to see since Thursday, I haven’t been taking as many photos. So instead I’ll point you to a couple of nighttime photos I found on Wikipedia’s article on all the fires. The one on the left is a view from Aliso Viejo across the valley (the Washington Mutual building at the lower left is half a block from the comic store I frequent) by Wikipedia user Bighead. The one on the right is a view from Mission Viejo by Kevin Labianco. His other photos on Flickr are worth looking at as well.

The OCFA has posted a nice map showing the progression of the fire. Since they replace their maps every day or so, the thumbnail links to a local copy of the map. (via AerynCrichton)

I’ve noticed people starting to speculate on terrorism as a possible cause of the fires, because it’s awfully suspicious that they’d all break out at once. Well, no, actually: it isn’t suspicious at all. Southern California is a very dry region. It rains in the winter (well, usually), then dries out in the summer. By the end of summer, the grasslands and brush are basically tinder. Then the Santa Ana winds blow in, usually in October: high speed, high temperature, low humidity. They dry things out even further, spark power lines, and once a fire has started (by arson, accident, etc.), make it spread rapidly. To make matters worse, there’s that drought I mentioned last week.

So if conditions are ideal (so to speak) for fire in one place, they’re usually ideal all over the region. We get wildfires every year, often two or three at once. They don’t get the headlines when they’re out in the wilderness, only when they encroach on cities and homes. And sometimes, when conditions are really bad, we get massive fires across the region. It’s happening now, it happened in 2003 (with the Cedar Fire being the largest), it happened in 1993 (the nearby Laguna Beach fire being only one of several).

In short, California burns regularly. People can help that process along, but it happens. Could terrorists have started some of the fires? (So far, only the Santiago Fire has been identified as arson.) Possibly. But it’s hardly the most likely explanation.

Smoky Sky

Had a chance to run through all my Santiago Fire photos from the last few days with Katie and my parents, and they picked out a few favorites that I hadn’t already posted.

This first one was Monday morning around 10:30, as I drove into the region covered by the smoke plume.

Just a few minutes later, I had parked at work, deep within that plume. he sky was a hazy orange-brown, and the sun was bright orange, as you can see looking up at this tree.

This next picture is yet another view of Monday’s sunset, seen from the 405 near Sand Canyon. This shows more variation in color, with a distinct cone of bright yellow surrounded by red, bounded by gray on the sides and fading to blue above.

Finally, here’s a view from the Quail Hill area on Tuesday just before sunset. This was taken from Knollcrest Park, roughly the same view as last month’s lenticular cloud photos. This is looking across the Saddleback Valley toward the Santa Ana Mountains. The smoke has cleared enough to see silhouettes, though the light has faded too much to see any more detail. The large plume is rising from Mt. Saddleback, the highest peak(s) in the range. The sun is very close to setting: the houses nearest the ridge are already in shadow, with the next row still in light.

Watching the Santiago Fire

Now that the wind and smoke have shifted, watching the progress of the fire has become a nervous office pastime. It’s far enough not to threaten us here, but from the windows along one side of the building, we can see the blackened hills through the haze. And we’ve got people who live in the areas being threatened. Every so often, a group will collect either looking out a conference room window, or checking current fire status online.

Sunlight is almost normal, if a tad yellowish. I went over to the Spectrum for lunch (yesterday I just ate in the cafe downstairs), and everything looked like business as usual…with one key difference. People weren’t sitting outside if they could help it. Normally, on a day this hot, the tables outside the food court would be full, and small children would be running through the fountain. Today those tables were empty.

I went up to the top floor of the parking structure to see what I could see, and to be honest, it wasn’t much. Even though the air was (relatively) clear where I was, it was still hazy off in the direction of the hills.

The wind mostly swept the pavement and sidewalks free of ash, but it’s collected on anything rougher—like a lawn. Whenever I cross a strip of grass, little puffs of dust rise around my feet. I had to clean my shoes when we got home.

Around 4:30 or so, the smoke lifted enough that the mountains were visible. After a few minutes, a thin column of smoke rose from behind the hills, with occasional bright flashes visible as flames flared up past the ridge.

It was getting dark by the time I picked Katie up from her office. On the way home, we could see the top of the ridge of hills silhouetted by a faint orange glow to the southeast.

More Fire

The wind shifted during the day, and by mid-afternoon the sky near where I work was considerably clearer—even though the fire seemed to be getting closer.

Some geography: The Santa Ana Mountains run parallel to the coast, and form the northeast border between Orange County and Riverside County. Here are a couple of photos from older blog posts showing the hills and the mountains in the background (though from very different angles).

The fire “broke out”* in the foothills on the western side of the mountains. One side went straight over the line of hills and down toward the flatlands, threatening homes in northeastern Irvine last night. That was stopped, but it continued along the canyons to the end of this set of hills, and last I heard had reached the edges of neighboring Lake Forest.

I think the front may have gotten within 4–5 miles of where I work, though we couldn’t see anything but smoke in that direction until late in the afternoon. Every so often I’d wander over to a conference room that normally has a clear view. Off to the northeast, everything faded to brownish gray. It faded to the southwest as well, but at least I could see silhouettes of the hills in the opposite direction.

I did, however, watch ashes floating by horizontally, 4 stories up.

Toward mid-afternoon, the wind (and fire) shifted, moving the worst of the smoke plume away, and outlines became visible. I took this one around 5:30, and you can just see the (likely) charred and smoking hills. (Notice also the orange balloon off toward the left.)

With all the smoke in the air, the sunset colors were intense. As the sun sank, it was a brilliant orange.

As it neared the horizon, dipping deeper into the layer of smoke, it turned almost purple, and was dim enough to look at directly. (Not that I stared—I’ve seen Pi after all!)

We got a break from the wind for several hours, which just ended minutes ago.

*Reports are that it was arson. What the hell is wrong with people who do this sort of thing? It’s not enough to set a bonfire, or even just burn down one structure—you have to burn down 15,000 acres of wilderness and possibly people’s homes?

City of Smoke

No 3AM evacuations, though we’re several miles away from the danger zone anyway. The Santiago fire we spotted yesterday was stopped before it crossed into suburbia, but judging by the OCFA map it was a near thing. Now it’s burning southeast, into the hills and toward the canyons. Some of which are inhabited. (Yes, there is a rural Orange County.)

We got some pictures of the fallen tree this morning. It managed to rip up a chunk of grass and displace a plastic divider, but it doesn’t seem to have damaged the walkway or stairs.

The winds are still going, which made the drive this morning… interesting. Leaves skittered across the road, swirling in dust devils. Some eucalyptus trees looked like they were bending at at least a 30° angle (and back again). My office turns out to be directly in the path of the smoke plume, which made for an odd view as I drove into it.

I’ve got some photos of a sepia sky, orange sun, and palm trees with all their leaves on one side, which I’ll try to post tonight, though it looks rather like the photo I posted during the October 2003 fires.

When I got to work, a few ashes were floating to the ground. I’m sure some of them managed to get into the car when I opened the door, which is rather annoying. There didn’t seem to be that many of them on the ground, until I noticed movement on the pavement. The ashes might look light-gray in the air, but they managed to blend in perfectly with the asphalt. That, and the wind seems to have blown most of them up against the curbs, where there’s a solid layer of ash.

The building, normally an off-white color, looked decidedly beige in the orange light. Everything looked faded. Well, almost everything. The iceplant around the parking lot edges looked greener than usual. It makes sense, since it’s normally bluish-green, and the orange-yellow lighting would cancel out the blue. Inside, the smell of smoke has permeated the building.

Update: Added photos.

Wind and Fire

The Santa Ana winds arrived in earnest overnight. We spent most of the day indoors, going about our usual business with the howling wind and occasional thump in the background. I’d glance up from my book (I’m about halfway through Regeneration, the conclusion of Julie Czerneda’s 3-part Species Imperative) and look out at the trees as the branches shifted, making the leaves shimmer.

We went out for a late lunch/early dinner, and noticed it smelled like smoke outside. There wasn’t any smoke visible, though. There were lots of trees bending as the wind gusted, including a conical juniper whose tip would bend over even further than the rest, then flip back, like a finger beckoning or a hand waving good-bye.

After dinner we ran a few errands. Around 6:00, we walked out of the S-Mart* in Tustin and saw a huge billowing cloud of smoke rising in the distance. All we could tell as we walked through the parking lot was that it was coming from the hills off toward Saddleback. I decided to go to the Best Buy parking lot, where I knew there was a much better view of the hills, and on the way, Katie managed to spot actual flames on the hillside.

By the time we reached Best Buy, the smoke plume had grown, the flames looked like they’d crept down the hillside, and the buildings across the way blocked more than I remembered.

But there were over a dozen people standing out in the lot, looking at the smoke, and taking pictures. In fact, as I ran around looking for a better view of the hillside, I noticed that people were walking out of the store, stopping, and getting out their cameras.

It was clear that we weren’t in imminent danger where we were, so we continued on with our errands. After sunset, we walked out of another store. While the smoke was invisible against the dark sky and the glare of the street lights, the moon was clearly visible—and deep red, not unlike during an eclipse (except with only a first-quarter moon). As the smoke shifted, the color changed to a lighter orange, then back to red. By the time we got home, we were clear of the smoke cloud and the moon looked normal.

Most news coverage seems to be focusing on the fire in Malibu, but the OC Register has an article on this one (link via Aeryncrichton). The location—near the 241/133 interchange and Portola Parkway—sounds like it’s near an area I drove through a few months ago, looking for random scenic views and finding the beginnings of new housing construction (and the “Ridge Valley” sign). That puts it disturbingly close to actual neighborhoods, though the fire authority site only indicates voluntary evacuations in that area.

When we got home, the sidewalk leading up to our apartment was blocked off. As we worked our way around the long way, we realized that the tree in front of our balcony had fallen over. Fortunately, away from the building and not into it. Just a few hours earlier, we’d been looking out at the courtyard and thinking it was a good thing all the table umbrellas were closed up, or someone on the other side would find one smashing through their window.

At this point, the smell of smoke has worked its way into our living room, but not anywhere else. Tomorrow morning’s gong to be interesting, that’s for sure. I’m just hoping it’ll be interesting on a normal Monday schedule.

*It used to be a K-Mart. Now it’s a “Sears Home Essentials”—as my brother once suggested, as opposed to “Sears Useless Crap You Don’t Need.”

Smoke and Fog

Monday morning dawned foggy. By the time we left for work, most of the fog had burned off, but we looked out the car window and saw a huge, billowing gray cloud hugging close to the ground. If this had been the usual fire season, or if there had been no fog to start with (or if there had been time for coffee to take effect), I think we would’ve both immediately recognized it as smoke from a brush fire. The Sierra fire in the Cleveland National Forest had started just a few hours earlier.

There was still fog around, though. Read the rest of this entry »

Smoke

The weather has been… unusual the last few days, to say the least. Tuesday afternoon I could see smoke from at least two of the fires that had broken out. There was a huge cloud billowing up from the southern horizon, and another huge cloud creeping over the hills to the north. Both seemed to have died down overnight, but they were back by Wednesday afternoon:

By Friday morning, there was enough smoke in the air to tinge the sunlight orange.

Then there was Saturday, which has to have been the most surreal experience I have had in a long time. Up to this point, there were plumes of smoke and large clouds covering parts of the sky. Now the entire sky was covered, keeping the day in permanent dusk, and when the sun could be seen it was bright red. Ashes fluttered to the ground. After several weeks of hot weather, it was cold.

The last time I remember this much smoke was about 10 years ago, I was in high school, and the nearest fire was in Laguna Canyon. And we had an appointment yesterday to check out wedding locations… in Laguna Canyon. So with this nuclear-winter-like atmosphere, we spent the day driving in and out of the very area I most associated with large, nearby fires.

One location we were looking at was setting up for a reception later that evening, and ashes had been drifting onto the plates.

Overnight the Santa Ana winds we’d been hearing about all week finally made their way over the mountains, stirring things up and driving the smell of smoke into our apartment. This morning, ashes were piled up everywhere, even in the carport.

We went out to lunch today, and I learned quickly that staying indoors was the way to go for the rest of the day. Whereas yesterday was all thick smoke up above, today the smoke is thinner, but it’s all at ground level. The sun is visible, but yellow, and it’s like standing immediately downwind of a campfire and not being able to move.

Yesterday was eerie. Today’s scary. Based on news from the radio, it sounds like the fires have roughly doubled in size and destruction since this morning’s paper was printed.

We’re just hoping the flames will get under control… and that none will spring up any closer.