Fires

The air last night was acrid.  Acrid and hot.  Stopped by a grocery store to pick up something for a block party, put some ice and water in a small cup and walked outside.  By the time I'd gotten to the end of the block, the ice had melted.

This morning there was some haze, but air seemed cleaner than last evening.  By midday the smoke had sunk in down to ground level, on a wind blowing south from British Columbia: forest fires in Central B.C.  I saw a map earlier that showed the entire Washington state, minus the higher parts of the Cascades, covered in smoke.  Air quality is listed as "moderate to unhealthy."  You can see it hang in the air when you look outside, making the air look thick.  My nose burned when I stepped outside.

Everything a tinder box.  It rained a little bit at my house last Thursday morning, but it's been dry, 45 days without measurable rain.

The sun was unctuous and luscious as it set: first a rich gold, then deep shades of orange, then a duller red, then pink then fading into gray as it dropped below the facing hill; the accompanying trail on the water a golden river, to a  red streak like a carpet rolled out, to a broken, faint pink line, then: nothing.  No sunset in the rest of the sky, just the smokey haze to dull into darkness.

It never got as hot as predicted, but it's still 81 outside now, and probably closer to 100 inside; no relief tonight.