Smoke

There's a wild forest fire east of here, close to I-80, along a road called Lowell Hill. That road runs along the Bear River's north bank all the way up to Highway 20. That's ghost town boonies. Nobody much lives out there.

The smoke billowed up in a huge plume yesterday, when it started, and then drifted down here last night. Sore throats from the poison oak smoke and manzanita burning everywhere. It is not very nice. The breeze finally came up, but its burning from the south so there's still a fair bit of this smoke around.

Containment is only 5% last I read, and its only about 3-4 square miles. Which is around 1700 acres. There's 640 acres per square mile, which is why square miles are a far better way to measure forest fires. Hell, they show them on the maps. They are called "sections". That measurement system is over a century old. Very useful, though. It is easy to divide and subdivide. All property deeds require recording the correct section your property is part of, at the assessors office, in order to be legal.

I wish it weren't burning. It wasn't nice sleeping with that floating around. It got bad enough to wake me up and shut the door. Then I had to breathe what was in the room afterwards. Not very nice. This is a big downside to living in the mountains. The wildfires make smoke for weeks, and the fire season lasts for months.

This one was started by a white lifted Jeep with big tires and a black roll bar. A bit generic description. All it would take is them pausing or dragging the hot tailpipe past some grasses. That would do it.