King Fire Smoke Pollution

Ever since a mad arsonist lit the King Fire a couple weeks ago, we've had smoke trundle in around midnight and stick around until midmorning or noon, but sometimes all day, like Yesterday. When we got rain here last week, it did NOT rain on the fire but the winds stirred up the fire even worse. The Lake Tahoe Ironman race was cancelled this morning because the smoke is so thick it would have put racers into distress. Thin air and mountains to climb in the raise are considered enough challenge. Adding smoke is a bit much. The racers said they were going to get a beer and figure out what race to do next. Good for them. A healthy response. I think they have an Iron Man at Lake Sonoma, and there's one at Lake Berryessa too. Neither is currently on fire. Both have great mountains to ride bikes over. Maybe those will be available?

Meanwhile I get to spend lots of time indoors with the windows shut, and when the wind does clear the smoke out I can open the house, change the air, cool it down again. And when the smoke comes back, close it again. This is the situation. There was a big thunderstorm out of the Southwest, which is Southeast of here of course, and dropped rain and lightning strikes right up to the edge of the fire but never quite onto it. This also means it missed us. Once it reached Hwy 50, the wind shifted and blew it straight west, of all things, into the Bay Area, which is a very abnormal pattern for a storm. Since this is now the first day of Fall and the Autumnal Equinox, fire season will continue until we get actual rains. Not showers, but drenching rains that soak the ground and make everything too wet to burn. This is California. Normally there's no rains in the summer, though technically they do get them in the Sierras as thunderstorms. If normal patterns were followed and the underbrush was allowed to burn every couple years, there would be no crown fires, which are the big ones that burn entire trees. Normally, a lightning fire ONLY burns the tree it hits, and then the underbrush burns but since its underbrush it never gets big enough to carry the flames into the tree tops so only the ground burns. The trees survive many fires, if things were balanced. The Indians used to help this along by noticing how the fires worked, and noticing that after the fires, there's a lot of grass growth which the deer like and so a couple years after a fire, there's meadows and deer to hunt. Deer taste awful, but its food and a lot better than acorns and buckeye mush which even their best soakings still cause upset stomach thanks to all the tannins and alkaloids. Still, its something to eat. The Indians cut down the brush, burned it, spread the ashes which helped the grass grow and when they moved camp to the last place they'd cleared, they got the advantages of plentiful game. The forestry department duplicated this effort and did serious clearing of understory brush so fires can't burn the trees. They continue this task along Highway 20, which is east of me. Its controversial. Fussy home owners think it is unfair to be charged money to clear land when they're already paying for fire planes to drop retardant to put out the fires. CalFire points out they wouldn't be dealing with all these fires if the brush was cleared, as nature intended and the Indians used to do before. There is lots of bull-headed stupidity responsible. The old way was the best because it duplicated the random lightning strikes. Everywhere these big fires have come will have severe erosion in the next rains, and that silt will flow into streams and from there to rivers and from rivers into reservoirs, where the slowed water will lose the carrying capacity, dropping it into the bottom of the reservoir. Eventually they fill. Englebright Reservoir, damming the Yuba River, is filling up with rocks and sand. Same with Lake Mead. California can only have agriculture, its big money maker, because of these reservoirs. If nothing is done, the water will be lost, and the flood control value in storms is lost and before you know it, before the end of this century, those dams will be little more than waterfalls with meadows and winter storms will flood the plains, making them into swamps of mosquitos, bass, and birds. Genocide Greens will love it. They love anything that kills humans. Unfortunately, for most normal people who just want to make a living and have a beer after work, it will become somewhat inhospitable. Odds are rather good we'll suffer some disasters after these fires. For now its huge clouds of smoke. In a month it will be landslides and road closures.