We had an anxious night – the fire was far enough away that we didn't need to stay awake all night, but close enough that we needed to keep an eye on it. So we set the alarm to get us up every few hours, and we kept an eye mainly on the Lyons Peak cameras. The view from Lyons Peak (looking south) at dawn is at right. The areas that look like flames are actually smoke that's lit up by the fire below it; the actual flames have been mostly out of sight from Lyons. Toward the right, the smaller orange areas may actually be flames on the northeast flank of Otay Mountain, but I can't tell for sure…
Just a short while later, I captured the photo at right, showing the same area. If I'm reading the smoke plumes correctly, it looks like the south flank of Mother Grundy/White Peak and an unnamed hill just north of Honey Springs Road (all out of sight from Lyons Peak) are burning and the smoke from those fires is blowing WSW over Otay mountain, completely obscuring it. It also looks like there is some burning on the NE flank of Otay Mountain, but I can't be 100% sure of this…
The MODIS satellite thermal imaging was updated during the night as the satellite made a pass. The orange areas are yesterday's hotspots, the red are the hotspots on the most recent pass. All of these are consistent with what I wrote just above, based on reading the smoke…As always, you can click on any of these images for a larger view.
This morning the situation in the Ramona area (the Witch Fire, to the north of us) looks much worse than the Harris Fire to our south. We cannot see anything but smoke, but there's lots of that – and within the past few minutes we just started to smell smoke for the first time. The cameras are still not showing anything burning upwind of us, so I'm not sure where the smell is coming from – but most likely it is some branch of the Witch fire…
My folks live near the end of the paved portion of Lawson Valley Rd in Lawson Valley. Do you know what the situation is like there?
ReplyDeleteHi, Bob...
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly the area that I live in -- that pavement end is a few hundred yards from our home. Everything is fine out here at the moment; a slight smell of smoke in the air, but that's it. The Harris Fire isn't an immediate threat to us (though of course that could change, especially if the winds change). We've heard on the news that there is a small fire in the Descanso area (around Boulder Creek and Eagle Creek), but we've been unable to find out anything about it, and I seen little evidence on the cameras of such a fire. If THAT fire is real, and were to kick up from the wind, that could be a threat to us in a hurry, as that is northeast of us and directly upwind...