September Smoke

It feels like an orange snow day.

So everyone else on the West Coast has this same problem and many have it much worse, but as this is a journal of my year, I must cover it. On Labor Day, Sept 8th, a strong Easterly brought with it a ton of smoke from Eastern Washington fires. Visibility was bad. Air Quality–hazardous. this is the same system that brought snow to my friend Linda on top of a mountain near Livingston and the city of Denver which went from 100 degrees to snow is 18 hours.

Then we got a couple days reprieve before the big cloud of smoke from California and Oregon fires hit us. During that reprieve I was able to host a very nice, socially distant, outside dining experience for my book club. We were reading my choice of a classic: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (no relation).

This brings us to Friday, Sept 11th. Already a day of infamy, the massive amount of smoke blew in from the coast on Southwesterly winds. Hazardous Weather Conditions prevail thru until Monday the 14th (when it just might rain).

Sun at 10 AM

Facebook is full of much better pictures of the eerie yellow sky and red sun poking through. I am wearing a mask to walk the dog and Roger did not go to Farmers Market. We are staying indoors even though there are pears and plums and apples to pick. But as I said earlier, our story is no where near as bad as the 500,000 in Oregon who had to flee, the many who lost everything, and even our friends close enough to the fires to begin packing their belongings and making decisions of what stays and what goes.

As was said by others more eloquently, this smoke and ash is what remains of the forests, the farms, the homes that have been destroyed.

In other news of the month, I did get a visit in with family in Mt Vernon for about one hour. Good to see them for even that short period.

cool mask, Ethel!