It's almost Thanksgiving, but it feels like midsummer. The Santa Ana winds are blowing, drying out everything to tinder, and this seems to bring out the nut cases and pyromaniacs, who take the opportunity to create enormous, scary, and destructive fires.
In the past, fire season came only once time a year. Now, with global warming, it seems to have extended to the entire year. When fires aren't a problem, floods are, particularly in semi-rural areas.
Though the smog and particulates in the air make for beautiful sunsets, they also make it hard to breathe and to go about one's everyday life. Gridlock on the freeway took on a whole new meaning yesterday when the entire freeway system shut down in spots because it was impossible to see for the smoke. I wonder what happened to all those people sitting on the road for hours and how or if they got where they were going.
My dad isn't very familiar with this fire stuff. I guess he doesn't remember last year. Yesterday he pointed to the heavy clouds (from the fire) on the horizon by the hills and said perhaps that meant it would rain. I explained that it didn't mean that. I wish it would rain though, and not a thunderstorm!
Meanwhile, my thoughts are with everyone displaced and dispossed by the fires.
2 comments:
Indeed, the sight of homes burning is is an image we never get used to.
Nor should we want to, though it might indeed happen, as it becomes more and more common. Part of it is the spread of houses out into areas that were left to their natural cycle of burning only a little while ago. Now that housing isn't worth as much, perhaps we should simply abandon and bulldoze those settlements and let them go back to doing what they do naturally. They are going to continue to burn, apparently, whatever we do.
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