You are SO fired.

Updated map You can [sort of] see that the hot spots (red dots) are not so much along the northern-most edge of the fire (light red area). The thin blue line is a measurement tool in the map from the fire's edge to my house, which is the upper arrow. 7.76 miles. Far enough ... for now. Improved situation Last night were forecast some dry lightning and gusty winds, none of which materialized. The fire crews made good progress and have a fire line between us and the fire, so unless we get really strong winds (unlikely), it's looking quite promising. There is only a light coat of ashes on things, as you can kind of see in this picture of the car: The sun is peeking out today and the air quality is much better than yesterday, where we basically had to stay inside and run the air conditioner. It's still pretty smoky. Here's the view out the window: It's supposed to look more like this:

 The winds have shifted — in an undesirable direction, and have picked up speed. Not great. Lots of smoke and ash in the air. Brief addendum: a few droplets of rain!

 The update as of this morning is encouraging. Here's what the incident command has to say: Firefighters are aggressively taking suppression action on the CZU Lightning Complex. The fire continues to burn in Southern San Mateo County and Northern Santa Cruz County. The fires continue to actively burn above the marine layer in the heavy timber and thick undergrowth. Several communities have been evacuated, please refer to the list of Evacuation Centers at the bottom of this update. Fire activity may dictate more evacuations and road closures in the days to come. Continued hot and dry weather is forecasted for the remainder of the weekend and into next week. Projected weather for today includes a fire weather watch through Tuesday for dry lightning and dangerous outflow winds.  Firefighting resources are limited due to the number of fires burning throughout California. Limited visibility due to smoke is hampering aircraft operations.  A pproximately 77,000 people have been ...

  I should note that I didn't take this photo, and it was taken from a vantage point closer to the fire than we are.

 A neighbor pulled together a bunch of links to resources related to this fire, which is extremely useful:      https://www.notion.so/CZU-Lightning-Fire-Directory-c02b05ac1bac4b3cb848cc3e9af59a26 My favorite is the camera link at the very bottom — except right now it's all smoke and/or fog. I think the word "smog" derives from a combination of "smoke" and "fog" but this is something completely different.

 I'm firing up this blog because there is a wildfire near us and already I can't keep up with all the friends and family who genuinely care and want to know what's happening. As of this [initial] post, there is a big wildfire (called CZU August Lightning or something ridiculous) that is burning on the west side of the ridge of mountains where we live. It has grown rapidly from several small fires that have now joined, and there are 57,000 acres burned, and it is 2% contained as of now. We are 8 miles from the fire, which is both a lot, and not very much, depending on which way the wind is blowing. So far it has been blowing away from us, which is good. In the map below, the darker red is the actual fire, and the lighter red is the evacuation zone. We may have to evacuate within hours, or days, or not at all. Hard to tell.