OT-Fires in Southern California
Lee Poulsen (Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:46:34 PDT)

We're okay as well. We live to the west of Tom and late Saturday night
was when the flames were visible directly above my neighborhood
(probably 3 or 4 miles away). But yesterday afternoon when the wind was
blowing away from Pasadena and the air was particularly clear, I could
see that the lower face of the mountains above the large firebreaks
above where the houses end had been scoured clean and there isn't
anything left to burn in our direction. I know there are still fire
lines some miles to the west of us, as well as to the north beyond the
crests of the mountains we can see, and off to the northeast further up
in the mountains. But there is still lots of smoke and ash, especially
in the mornings when it seems the air currents blow it all in our
direction.

Luckily we never had the high speed Santa Ana winds that blow out of the
mountains towards the coast, even though we did have the very high
temperatures (~40°C) and single digit humidity. That probably would have
been a much greater disaster. The heat and dryness is supposed to be
ending this week.

I've kept the summer growers watered and they're doing okay. And who
knows, maybe some of the plants that like fires might bloom for me this
winter...

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USA, USDA Zone 10a

Thomas Glavich wrote: