Sunday, July 1, 2007

Fire in Paradise

Last night (still tonight as I write this, at 12:30am), we were out at a ranch west of Santa Barbara when we looked east and spotted smoke rising from behind the Santa Ynez mountains. There was nothing on any of the local news media (to which we had access at the time). And, to my knowledge, nobody has blogged about it yet either. (Correction: The Independent has this story.) One of the party-goers found out from a public safety contact that the fire was along Paradise Road, in Paradise Valley, which lies behind the spine of the Santa Ynez mountains. The mountains run about 4 miles from the coast, and Paradise Valley lies about six miles inland.

InciWeb lists it as the Rancho Wildland Fire. As of 2.5 hours ago, it was holding at 300 acres. "Since sunset, the spread has substantially slowed." Winds were very high from our vantage, and they were clearlly blowing smoke seaward, but the smoke diminished after looking scary early on. The time of origin is listed as 1736 (5:36 PM), although it first appears in my photos at 1729.

Any news organization, or blogger, or anybody, is free to use the photos linked to from the shot above.

Meanwhile, growth potential is "high", terrain difficulty is "extreme", and "potential problems exist on the east flank".

Fire hazard here in southern California is at a record high. Earlier fires started in Paradise Valley or on this side of the ridge have burned enormous areas.

By the way, on this day seventeen years ago, the Painted Cave Fire spread from a spot near the center of the photo above, eventually burning 5000 acres, 440 houses, 28 apartment complexes and 30 other structures. Painted Cave itself is a community on the ridge of the mountain behind which the smoke can be seen rising.

[Later...] Reports from Edhat, Santa Barbara Newsroom, KSBY, KEYT, San Jose Mercury-News (Associated Press), Lompoc Record, The Santa Barbara News-Press has a subscription-only report. The Independent has an update. Inciweb at 5pm said the fire was now 700 acres and 50% contained. The South end of the fire is lined. Good progress has been made along the west flank. Firelines are not yet completed on the east and north flanks. But the wind is low and the temperature only 70 and sure to drop as the sun gets low and goes down. The current plan: Tie in handline to dozer line on the west flank. Continue handline on the east side.

Also, you can subscribe to email notifications from the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, which currently has Santa Barbara and the South Coast under a Red Flag Alert.

Here are some of the pictures I have taken in Paradise Valley.

Tag: ranchofire.

Magical mountains

I was lucky to finagle a window seat just behind the wing on the shady side of our Continental 737 for my way back from Houston last Sunday. Got quite a few good shots of stuff I hadn't seen before: the Monahans Dunes of West Texas, White Sands Missle Range and Las Cruces in New Mexico (the former sheltered inside the very impressive Organ Mountains), the Gila River, massive copper mines in the mountains east of Phoenix, lakes and dams on the Salt River (Roosevelt, Apache, Suguaro...) the Chrysler proving grounds...

But the most impressive views were of familiar mountains — the San Bernardinos and the San Gabriels, which together frame the Los Angeles basin.

At the late hour of the day when we encountered them, the approach to LAX was straight west, while the sun set somewhat north of that, so I was looking almost directly into the sun over the wing when I spotted the San Gabriel Mountains laced with this amazing haze. I'm not sure if it was smog or something made by nature rather than civilization. I suspect the latter. The color was too light. This wasn't brown L.A. haze, or the orange layers that come from fires, but something else. (Although you get a little L.A. smog close to the ground in this shot.)

So I shot it. That's the series you'll find if you click on the link behind the picture above. Or here.

By the way, this was supposed to be a Saturday post, but it went up too late.