Category Archives: California Fires

Fire in the mountains…




As you may know, several weeks ago there was a serious fire in the Santa Cruz mountains, not very far from our house. While the fire was on the other side of the mountains, the smoke was immediately visible to us down in the valley.

Naturally, there was a great deal of local tv coverage provided by their helicopters and on-scene folks… given our location, we also had a fair amount of fire aircraft traffic overhead as they transited to the fire area.

For the first few days of the fire, the wind was blowing the smoke away from the valley, then switched direction and began blowing on-shore (on the other side of the mountains is the Pacific Ocean)… which meant our area soon received a heavy cover of smoke combined with a light dusting of ash.

I’m sure there were more than a few clenched cheeks in our neighborhood as we wondered if the fire would find its way down the mountains to us. I know with the dryness / drought conditions, recent increase in firetruck / emergency response vehicles, we’re checking our emergency supplies and procedures to do our best to be prepared if something bad comes our way.

These are a couple of photos I shot of the sky from our backyard and a shot of the Prius hood covered with ash.