kathyeastlick's Journal, 29 August 2014

Great weight loss! Have a great hike! :) 

Well done :-) 

Glad the fires are getting better, I've been watching your weather and hoping for rain for you. Enjoy your walk on a nice day. If you were close, I'd put some of those quilts on my machine and quilt them for you. Have to get a double fleece blanket done this weekend or my granddaughter's shower next week. Fabric is waiting for me.  

Wholefoodnut, Got up for the hike @ 6:15 and the smoke was on the ground thicker than ever. Dang! I ended up canning dill pickles instead and then went to a baby shower! Returned home, and the smoke was gone! Yeah!! SO we hurried up the mountain and got a good hike in. I was so happy to get out in the fresh air. 

Deb_N and Jenny.Brett, Thanks! 

Nice job, well done! 

That is so weird that it comes and goes like that. Is it due to wind? sounds like you had a busy day! Glad you had a chance for a hike without smoke.  

It's been a hard summer for fires. We are also faced with severe drought issues. Our small valley, pop. 3,000, is made up of 4 small towns, mine has 700 population. We were originally hit with lightening storms which started the first 3 fires. The valley is kind of a basin where all the smoke settles. When you have fires they make their own wind and that's how hot embers get carried for miles. I'm not kidding...the nearest fire is about an hour away and we are getting huge chunks of charred tree limbs, and leaves on my front porch. The original 3 fires are now contained but we now have 2 new ones. Everything is so dry, and it just doesn't take much to start a new one. Today when we were hiking we could look down on the road below. We watched for at least 20 minutes as truck after truck of firefighters, water tankers, bulldozers were coming off their day shift. We have one fire encampment of 1700 firemen and crew. Now that the other fires have started the have set up another encampment, of over 2,000 employees. Our valley has never seen so many people, and the amount of fire vehicles. Tonight I thought it was pretty cool when I saw how many local folk lined the main street to wave at the day crew coming off the mountain. The fire trucks flashed their lights at all the kids. I know, small town stuff, but under all the dirt and grime, these firefighters are our hero's! Well, I didn't mean to write a novel, I guess I was just winding down from a long day! Good night K. 

Typical of me! Didn't really answer your question!! With so many fires, each having their own wind current, and then you have your regular weather patterns too, everything just swirls around. So one minute you can have smoke to the ground with little visibility, and then later in the day winds come up and blow it out. Pretty crazy! 

Oh my!! So sorry for the people living closer to the fires. Firefighters are the heroes sometimes. Have lived in small towns for many years and more than once the electric repair guys and tree removal crews were our heroes after ice storms. We would supply them with many cups of coffee, hot chocolate, hot tea, or whatever we could to help them out.