Things Seem to be Improving

The sun rising behind the smoke.

Later in the day, still smoky.

The last few days, I have woken up and looked out the front door to see an ominous wall of smoke on the eastern horizon, obscuring the sunrise. Today, I opened the door and thought that it was the worst day ever in terms of the smoke! Until I realized that what I was seeing was actually fog. The wind has shifted to bring cooler, more humid air from the Pacific. For those of us living in coastal areas, including San Diego, this is good news. The westward migration of the fires has been stemmed and the largest of the fires in our area (Witch Creek Fire) is estimated at 40% contained with full containment estimated by Tuesday. There is a down side here, and that is that people living to the east of the fires are now threatened. Many evacuated areas are in the process of being repopulated, but evacuations of other areas continue... so there's still a long way to go. We are still safe and have had no problems related to the fires or evacuations, but there remains a warning to beware of poor air quality and limit exposure. Hopefully we will get some stronger sea breezes in to help clear out the smoke and pollution.