Our luck ran out. Ground smoke began moving into the area around 2:30 pm yesterday. It gave me a terrible sore throat. It lifted somewhat by 7 pm, but we're now under a dense overcast of smoke. The all too familiar blood-red sun is back. The bad news is they’re now saying that smoke may be here to stay … or until they get the fires out (whichever comes first). The super bad news is that a fire behavior specialist on the Dixie Fire was describing yesterday that fuel level moisture has never been this low – not even in the late part of the season in previous drought years. Fire behavior is unlike anything anyone has ever seen with multiple pyrocumulonimbus cloud tops on a single fire, spotting 5+ miles out in front of the fire, and daily acreage consumption that is typical of a north wind event.
Imagining how a fire might behave under these dry conditions during the strong north wind events we get in September and October is beyond terrifying! They would literally be unstoppable.