Fire!

There's a forest fire raging in Ventura County. It's been going on for several days now and spreading like…well, wildfire. I don't know which came first, but there's also been a change in the breeze last few days.

Thursday was overcast all day and chilly, but instead of going on for a few days like that, we woke up Friday to blazing sun -- quite unusual for us near the coast, which has a foggy marine layer most early mornings. And then it started to roast. Hot off-shore winds brought all that inland heat down into our valley and it's been pretty much clear and hot since then.

The fire is far away enough not to affect us, but today we drove to LA and we noticed a thick haze covering the skies even from as close as Nipomo. By the time we drove through the Gaviota pass, you could no longer see the sun. The fire is up near Castaic but has been growing with the strong winds. First it was 15% contained, now it's only 30% contained and is close to Ojai.

I guess it's keeping people away from this area because the traffic was light enough for us to make the Ranch-Condo run in 3 hours and 15 minutes. But you can hardly cheer the record run when it's caused by a natural disaster, can you?