Fires gone Wild


Yes, California is on fire. Mostly in the mountains right now, but the mandatory evacuation zones cover a lot of the highways leading out of the affected areas, so, y’know, leave now while you still can. The LA Times has a useful but graphically muddy map covering all the active fires.

The one nearest me, the River Fire, is mostly working its way through mountain areas that are very sparsely populated, with the exception of Carmel Valley. The perimeter doesn’t seem to have shifted much in that direction, so presumably that’s part of the ~10% they have contained. It’s not a threat to me at this time, apart from the smoke and ash; it would have to go through a lot of irrigated fields and the entire city of Salinas, which would admittedly suck.

The SCU Complex Fire (East Bay) is huge, prompting evacuations in parts of Fremont, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, etc, and is getting close to I-5 near Patterson. The evacuations are only advisory for Morgan Hill and Gilroy at the moment, according to this map. While the northwest edge is getting close to I-680, the southwest edge is still comfortably far from Highway 101.

The CZU Complex Fire (Santa Cruz Mountains) is currently completely uncontained and the mandatory evacuation zone now includes parts of Santa Cruz and all of Scotts Valley, as well as Highways 1, 9, and 17.

North of the Bay Area, Napa and Sonoma are threatened by the LNU Complex Fire, and west of that, the 13-4 Fire stretches from Highway 101 to the ocean, northwest of Santa Rosa. And there are a lot of smaller fires scattered around the state.

On the bright side, the heat wave that had the utilities threatening rolling outages has subsided somewhat, although the advice to open your windows at night when it’s cool is probably not being followed in most areas (coughcough).


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