It's Snowing in Harbor City

PV used to be a pretty good little mountain in the background.

There's no chill in the air, but we're being dusted with a light powder anyway. There's an orange tint to the thin sunlight and a steady stream of ash is floating oh-so-peacefully down.

All week long we've been watching the wildfires up in Santa Barbara and this morning in Sylmar (East San Fernando Valley area). They've been quite dramatic and tragic, but rather far off and not much of an immediate impact. That changed this afternoon when a fire broke out on the Palos Verdes Peninsula which looms over our neighborhood. About an hour and a half ago the wind picked up and shifted our way and the smoke and ash have been coming in pretty heavy.

I think I know what he feels like.

I took a walk around to see what I could see. Not much. It's getting pretty nasty outside and in the 10 minutes I was out and about it got darker and smokier. I smell like I've been camping or that I'm at some wickedly huge barbeque. My lungs and throat are stinging pretty badly.

It's really terrible weather for firefighters. It's very dry and hot today (up into the 90's in places), and the Santa Ana winds that come in from the deserts to the east have picked up and are gusting heavily. About as bad a set of conditions as you can get. This one could be a bad one.




The news from the Sylmar fires isn't getting any better. All the freeways between the Santa Carita and the Antelope Valley into L.A. are closed. A mobile home park in the area has supposedly had 600 out of 700 units destroyed. As a former "modular estate" denizen, I really feel for the victims. It's especially heartbreaking to hear that they think it might have been started intentionally. Stacy's family live up off the Antelope Valley Freeway, which is currently closed off, though I don't think they're immediately threatened.

UPDATE (1:45PM): The PV fire has been put out, though now the fires up north have been spreading. Stacy's folks can see the fires from their house in Agua Dulce. And now there are new fires breaking out in Anaheim Hills (to the east).

UPDATE (2:10PM): The winds have shifted again. The smoke from PV isn't bad anymore, but the smoke from the Anaheim Hills fires are significantly worse. It looks like it's 6:00PM rather than 2:00PM. I saw a helicopter go by and when it came out of the smoke it looked like something from Apocalypse Now. We have to go to a funeral tomorrow east from here. Wonder how that's going to play out since the folks organizing it have all their roads blocked now too.

UPDATE (2:30PM): It's eerily orange out. Anaheim Hills is really burning. People are abandoning vehicles on the freeway because of the smoke and traffic.




UPDATE (2:50PM): Every time the newscasters mention an arial water drop, L gets quite concerned for the Little Mermaid's safety.

UPDATE (4:25PM): If nothing else, the soot makes for a great sunset. Probably not much of a consolation for those that lost their homes.

Stacy's windshield.