Some of the outlying communities here in the Redding area are continuing to be evacuated, including the historic town of Shasta and French Gulch. Old Gold Rush towns.

Anyone interested in seeing what is happening up here can take a look here:

http://enplan.com/fires/index.html

and some YouTube vids people are shooting of the various fires up here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nznVg1nbZtY&feature=related

The smoke from these fires comes down in to the valley most nights. Last couple we're getting some disturbingly large chunks of ash.

On that fire map you can zoom out and go down to the south to Chico (home of the legendary university of... the number one party school in the country! )

Send some positive vibes for the folks in Paradise and Magalia. The fire down there has already taken dozens of homes and has hundreds more in its path.

Needless to say the whole valley north of Sacramento is one hazy mess. Visibility is less than a half mile in some cases and we tied a 1905 heat record the other day at 113 I think it was.

I know you guys are probably seeing a lot of this on the national news but I gotta tell ya, it's a lot like Hell up here right now. Every place has something right? Earthquakes, tornados, floods, hurricanes... yeesh. I'll try to post whatever I can find, for those who are interested. Pretty wild ride up here right now.

BTW: Big props to all of the firefighters from around the country that are here and in the Chico/Paradise area. This is a hell of a nasty business. I've been thanking them as I run in to them at the stores and gas stations, etc. I've seen door badges from as far away as Colorado. Canadian air tankers too!

Some photos people are taking up around here: http://redding.mycapture.com/mycapture/photos/Album.asp...870&CategoryID=35443


SmokeDialBridge

Man, I'm certainly wishing the best for you guys, Adam. Hang in there. This can't last forever.

Hang in there, man. Jeez that looks scary. My bro went thru it a few years back in Kelowna BC - a very,very aired area of BC in the summer. His friend lost his place but he was spared.

I see the Mars Water Bomber is down there

http://redding.mycapture.com/mycapture/photos/JXImage.a...CollectionID=0&Sort=

It was a big help in SD last year so hopefully is helping out this year too. It's home base is on a lake pretty close by.

Thanks guys, we're more or less OK here right now, unfortunately I happen to live on the west side of town which is a bit closer to the action - about 10 miles maybe (not a real huge deal unless this thing burns in to town). Lot of smoke and ash coming in though, which is miserable I gotta tell ya. In all my years here, I've not seen it this bad, this was supposed to be a 50 year lightning storm, I believe it - quite a fireworks show.

The real heartache is down in the Paradise area by Chico (at least so far). NPR had the houses lost at 50 (I think) this morning, although they were waiting for an update. That thing down there by the Feather River was just nasty. They're just now starting to get it contained. Hopefully it doesn't spark back up - it did once before, which is what took the 50 homes, I believe.

Very interesting (and thankful) to see the help coming in. It's coming in from around the world now, I think I heard Australia and/or New Zealand the other day (have to check).

Yeah, that Mars plane is incredible. To see it flying over is actually pretty awesome - the thing is super HUGE. It just came back up from the Big Sur fire.

We had a DC 10 water bomber fly in from McClellan the other day. I didn't get to see it in action, but I heard it was pretty spectacular too.

Here's something real peculiar: I've been noticing that the oak trees are starting to turn yellow - like Fall. I don't know if the trees are prematurely yellowing because of the constant smoke, like cloud cover or...? Hearing a lot of bark beetles this year, I suppose they could be killing the oaks

Clearing up a bit up here today. Lot of the fires are contained or close to it. So far so good today.

Looks like we had a couple of dope growers from south of the border who were injured a bit when they were caught in a fire area they weren't supposed to be in.

That's a bit scary up here in this area the last couple of years. The pro pot growers are usually illegals brought in to watch the crops. the big problem, aside from polluted growing areas, is that they booby trap the plantations with grenades and are a lot of times armed with assault rifles and pistols, etc. Firefighters from out of the area were warned about all of this and told to slowly back out of the area until they could get deputies in to the area. Haven't heard if anything happened like that. You have to be careful hiking the woods up here because of that.

Other than that, doesn't appear to be much injury or loss of homes up here. The Paradise/Concow area down by Chico wasn't so lucky, looks like about 50 or so homes down there.

Still waiting to hear final burn data on total acres, etc. It's going to be quite a lot I would imagine.

In some ways the fire up here (in the Redding area) is a good thing, a lot of underbrush/overgrowth in this area due to well-intentioned, yet failed, forestry management over the years has created an awful lot of dry fuel on the ground - they just let it all pile up. The last five years or so we've had some pretty good size forest fires (nothing like this since probably '77 or'78 that I can remember), where as in some years we don't have any at all. Dead brush and fallen trees and all that add up after a while though.

The President, Governor and various elected officials made the rounds yesterday. I was so enthused I forgot they were coming

The smoke has returned - real bad yesterday and today. Must have been clear enough at the airport for Air Force 1.

Interesting side note to this: This is the first time since JFK that a sitting President has been here. Kennedy dedicated Whiskeytown Dam some time right before he travelled to Dallas. There's a memorial at the lake with his speech preserved in a recording - press the button, here the man. Same park where one of the fires is now.

A couple of small towns in Trinity County (to the east of us, heading toward the coast) are being evacuated. A couple of these fires are only about 50% contained.

The illegal Mexicans that wandered out of the pot plantation the other day, ahem... I mean the forest area affected by the fire (yeah that's it) 'could' be deported according to reports. Not sure why this is 'could' and not 'will be' but whatever.

So we're not quite there yet with these fires. I heard on NPR this morning they're hoping to have full containment by the 25th.

BEATS ME...
why people ever built up in those areas.

they never belonged there.

if it were me, i'd move.

I assume you mean the illegals running the pot farms.

no, i was talking about people building homes and neighborhoods in areas that historically burn.

it's stupid.

on the flipside, once it all burns down, and everybody rebuilds, it will take quite a while before all that fuel builds back up again, and by then, everyone present will be dead from old age, so what the hell.

Here's a shot from a newspaper photog.

The smoke and haze has been pretty normal around here the last couple of weeks - miserable (today is pretty good though). This little town (in the shot) is Weaverville, which is off to the west of us here in Trinity County. I imagine it's been worse over there in Weaverville recently, lot's of evacuations all around it. Anyway, this gives an idea of what it's been looking like around here lately. Not fun.

Firefighters from all over the world are here battling these things - still pretty amazing.

Downtown Weaverville w/ Smoke

If you listen to NPR at all, there's been some stories on the plight of a rescued black bear cub. Not sure how severe his burns are, I missed some of the update this morning, I heard his paws and legs were affected to some extent though. The cub is now at a wildlife rescue facility where they are taking care of him. Thought it was an interesting side bar kinda story, so... here's a pic of the firefighter and the cub:

Smokey Junior (yes they seriously named him that)

Add: The bear cub is in Lake Tahoe (wish I was there dammit)

Some vids and pics of "Li'l Smokey" at the Wildlife Care center:

Bear Cub