The Fires

I'm pretty sure you have heard about the fires in California.  They are kind of close to us.  Not evacuate close, but horrible air close.  You can see a map of the Station fire here at the LA Times.  We are in Panorama City on the left toward the bottom - about 13 miles away from the fire.  To help you get your bearings downtown LA is straight south of Glendale but off this map (unless you zoom out and such). 

Driving to church on the 101, this is what we saw looking out to the west (the opposite direction of the fire): 

 

That's not fog or the window making the trees just a mile away look wacky.  That's smoke. It was thick.  We could smell it in the car and from the freeway the off ramps looked like a path to obivlion. It was so bad.

 Oh, what?  Those are  some pretty clouds?  No.  That's smoke.

This next one is approaching downtown LA.  Again, this is not the windows or fog.  Just smoke.

Even when we are driving through actual downtown everything still looks funny from the smoke.

Driving home from church this is what we saw looking out to the east:

Oh, what a pretty sunset with pretty clouds.  No.  It's smoke again.  Much more obvious in the next picture after we round the corner.

Yeah, that's where it started and you can see the blanket of smoke. Yum.

The other night the moon looked really red from the smoke but we couldn't get a good picture of it. 

It has been really hot here in the valley and the fire is not helping.  The valley is always the hottest part of the greater LA area anyway without the help of the fire.  In the summer it works this way: The beach temp is 75.  That means downtown LA is  85 and the valley is 95.  We are pretty much always 20 degrees hotter than the beach.  I'm SO glad we have air conditioning!

I woke up three days in a row and looked outside and was excited because it looked cloudy.  Except it was smoke.  Again. Just covering  the entire sky and valley.  Our air quality was in the "red zone" or "unhealthy" for about 5 days.  Now we're back to moderate (two spots down) which is where most of LA is most of  the time.  Except Long Beach.  Theirs always seems to be good. Even in the middle of the fire the air quality was "good" in Long Beach.

And it's Labor Day Weekend!  We're off to the beach tomorrow and Monday!  I guess living in LA does  have some perks.