Oh Oh!!

[Tom]

A storm is knocking on the door.  Lightening and thunder a little rain.  The wind is starting and the sky is yellowish green. It's 5:20 and almost dark.  The sky is aglow, without any direct light.   I think I'll go hide.

[Mooseherder]

We need some of that.
Please send some south.

[SwampDonkey]

Been about 3" of rain here in a week, some places have had 6" around here. The woods is full of water.  Slop slop slosh!!! : Wetter now than spring time.

[Tom]

I'm back on line and the sky is brighter but still yellow.  The air is full of smoke (has been all day)  There must be a forest fire somewhere.  There wasn't enough rain to even clear the air.   The wind blew like crazy. 

When it quit storming enough to go outside, I opened the back door and found out it was 1957 again.  After living my life again and not being able to change anything, here I am again.

Mooseherder, you don't want any of this mess.  I turned off the computer and lights and left the computer room to go sit with the Mother in Law and the walls of the house were so charged that the hair on my arms stood on end as I passed through the door.

The smokey air is really beginning to settle now and looks like a heavy fog.  I guess I need to find out where the fire is located.

[Tom]

The best I've been able to figure is that the smoke is coming from large grass fires and woods fires south of Jacksonville.  That's strange to me since the wind has been from the WNW and should be pushing the smoke south and out to sea.  perhaps there are others.

[tcsmpsi]

I can't even muster the 'courage' to think the "f" word...  It is likely as much a tinder box around here as I have ever seen.

The fire danger sign at the Texas Forestry on the way to the house has stated "EXTREME" for two months, at least.

[Mooseherder]

We are about to get a similar downpour here.  A severe thunderstorm warning.
The radar is all yeller.  The wind is whipping.  They say we have an 80 year drought.
Hope this makes a dent in it.

[Tom]

8:00 and we have another one passing over. Lots of electricity and yellow sky.

St. Johns County, to the south, all the way over to Union County, to the West, is really taking a beating, according to the News.   If it is worse than here, I'm glad I'm not there.

[ellmoe]

Tom, I drove back from a quick visit to my folks yesterday and ran into that smoke. From Starke south we were in smoke. At Waldo it was almost too thick to drive through. The smoke was gone by the time we reached Citra. There is definitely a good fire there somewhere.

Mark

[Mooseherder]

Wow, we needed that and a bag of chips.
Sounds like you had it worse than we did.
I didn't last long as it was fast moving but did leave behind a lot of water.
It was the perfect late day storm.

[Tom]

The wind an lightening scare me to death.  :D

Ellmoe!   What in the world is going on around the Flagler beach area that causes so many fires every year?

[ellmoe]

Ellmoe!   What in the world is going on around the Flagler beach area that causes so many fires every year?

  I haven't been around that area in awhile, but I'll hazzard a guess: large population next to a large, fire climax , forested area = no one willing to do contol burns because of liability and smoke complaints. Therefore you have fuel build up to levels ripe for a wildfire. We also stop many wildfires before they get large, also increasing the remaining fuel supply. If you have a control burn and there is a serious auto accident anywhere near the smoke you can guarantee the buzzards, I mean lawyers, will be circling.  Unless you need the cattle grazing, why spend money and take a litigation and/or PR risk?

Mark

[Tom]

Well, I understand all of the smoke a little better.  There is a Fire in Brunswick, another down closer to the State line that has US-17 closed, one close to Fplkston (straight north of here), the Okeefenokee is still burning, one in Union County and one in Bradford county (both to the southwest) and at least one in Flagler county (to the south).   The TV media was all hyped up about a two acre grass fire yesterday as if it were to burn the town down.

A friend of Gael's went deepsea fishing with her husband and said that the smoke was so thick 25 miles off-shore that you couldn't even see the other boats.  They still got sunburned.

[fishpharmer]

Heck of a way to smoke fish.