Sun, Smoke and Oak

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Sun, Sunset, fire, wildfire, smoke, photography

The sun through the smoke.  Yes, that is the sun and not the moon.

The first big wildfires of the season broke out here yesterday.  The Panther and Cedar fires were burn a ways to the South and just a few miles apart.  With a strong dry North wind they made a good run.  A huge column of smoke stretched over the valley and the sun was obscurred last night when I took these pictures.  Hopefully the firefighters made good progress last night when the winds died down.

Sun, Sunset, fire, wildfire, smoke, photography

Sun through the smoke and oaks.

May first and we are already seeing forest fires.  Dry down is well underway here.  This doesn’t bode well for this Summer’s fire season.  Here we go again.

83 thoughts on “Sun, Smoke and Oak”

  4. I’ve been worrying that it would be an early fire season this year. The grass on the hills behind our home here in the East Bay have become dry far too early. Hope these fires in Napa are contained quickly.

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    • We normally have very little rainfall at all from June through September. Usually, the high fire activity get going in July, August and September. This year it dried up much earlier. We are facing high fire danger from May through September or even November. The fire can start from all kinds of things; old burn piles, lightening, arson, kids and matches and so on. Wildfire is something we live with here every Summer only some years are worse then others. This year has all the makings of a dramatically bad fire season.

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  19. Oh Tim we have just seen some pretty dramatic footage just now on the BBC news of the wildfires in California …. terrible .. fingers crossed the winds will die down and some sort of order and control can come asap.

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    • We have been suffering terrible winds for some time. One expert reported we had our windiest April since 1953. We are ready for calm. The firefighters won’t get control of anything until the winds settle. The big fire in SoCal will burn all the way to the Pacific if it hasn’t already.
      Thanks for you crossed fingers!

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    • Thanks Jennifer. I know you folks deal with these kinds of fires too. Our rainy season came to an early end. We may not see heavy rain until November. We came home to fire engines at the end of our road last night. They put the fire out quickly, but we lost power all night.

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  25. The pictures are beautiful. But I hate that the reason they are so beautifully eerie is because of fires! Hoping for rain to come your way over the summer so that it’s not dry enough for fires!!!

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  27. So Sublime…yet quite unsettling…

    Those fires are rampant now 😦

    God – Willing soon they will all be under control and no homes, people, or Fire Fighters shall be harmed…

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  28. So amazing pictures, I suppose you use a photo filter for the sun.. it’s just great.
    Those fires are terrible, they told about it in French television and i wondered if it was in your forest!
    I hope this will be undercontrol very soon and that nobody will be armed
    good luck

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    • It was smoke from a timber fire. The smoke was at high altitude and to the West, so our air quality was still good. During bad wildfire years we will have long periods of very bad air quality when big fire are burning locally.

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    • The fires have calmed down for the time being. It is true that when we have big fires in Northern California that we get some of our most spectacular sunsets. The fires are bad, but we may as well enjoy the sunsets. What else can we do.

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  37. Hello Tim,
    I am a fiction writer and I have written a story about the California wildfires. I found your gorgeous images of pink suns online. I wanted to ask your permission to use one of these on my personal website to accompany my story. Your name and image credit would appear below the image. I hope that it may work out, and look forward to your reply.

    Thank you,

    Eva Warrick
    https://evawarrick.com/

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Let me know what you think!