Murk

It will be a long summer. Today it got to 106° F here with only a couple of miles of visibility, the skies still hazy with smoke as it has been for much of the past several weeks. There are still 18 fire complexes burning throughout Northern California, 10 of these in the mountains rimming the Sacramento Valley.

The current air quality is a lot better here than what it is today where we used to live. There is a major wildfire in the Santa Barbara area, in the mountains north of Goleta and UC Santa Barbara. The fire started on July 1, and has burnt about 10,000 acres. The eastern perimeter of the fire got very close to the little enclave in the mountains where we spent a year-and-a-half, the San Marcos Trout Club, but the fire was held at the ridge just above and to the west. For now the Trout Club seems okay: the residents had been evacuated but have been allowed to return to their homes as of this afternoon. And typical Santa Barbara summer weather is now helping there — evening and morning fog, highs in the low 70s.