Sunday, smoky Sunday

It was on a Sunday 4 years ago that the San Diego County area was devastated by the Cedar fire. That one came within 10 miles of where I live. The smoke covered the area for a week and schools were closed the entire time. It was one of those Santa Ana wind mornings where I woke up and looked out SportsBoy’s window to the east and just *knew* it would be a fire day. Today dawned the same. I knew there were already fires in Malibu and Malibu mom had already checked in to let us know where it was and that she was OK, but I also just knew something would burn closer. SportsBoy’s baseball game was about 5 miles due east of here at a high school and we arrived at 11:30 to gusty winds and dust swirling around from the fields. The game started at 12:30. Around 1:00, I smelled smoke. By 1:15, we could see off to the northeast that the sky was taking on the familiar smoky hue and it was bearing down on us fast. By 1:45 we noticed ash falling. We started calling people we knew who lived in that direction and confirmed there was a fire in that direction and that it was quite far away from us – 40 to 50 miles away. The 35-50 mph wind gusts though, had taken the smoke to us in less than an hour. Turns out the fire was first reported around 12:40. 3000 acres have burned in the Santa Isabel/Ramona area as of this writing and the wind is blowing all the smoke directly over here. I took these photos outside the house 30 mins ago. It is just like the Cedar fire although this one today is actually quite a bit further away. It’s just that the wind is stronger this time. Sunday in October + Santa Ana winds = trouble for San Diego. Again.