It really is the big smoke here in Boise at the moment. There are several huge bushfires burning in the region, and it seems like the smoke from all of them has decided the Treasure Valley would be a good place to settle.
Here’s what the city looked like last night (Monday our time) at sunset:
On my way to work this morning, it seemed to have cleared out a bit. I optimistically took this pic thinking I could let you all know that the smoke has cleared:
Four hours later, and this is from the same spot:
It’s been like this for what feels like years, but is really only a week or so. It’s also been very hot. I guess the upside of the crummy air quality is that the low winds are helpful to the firefighters. They certainly aren’t going to get any help from rain any time soon.
There is a fire burning about seven miles (about 11 k’s) from the cabin, but so far so good. Daniel was up there over the weekend, and the air was apparently more clear there than it was here! He made sure we have enough hoses if we need them, and I told him he should probably find a spot for himself in the creek in case he needed it. It was a bit nervewracking when we first found out about it, but as it turns out that's all it was.
The latest report as I write this shows that the fire is about 65% contained. If you’re interested, here’s a link to the fire: http://www.inciweb.org/incident/3093/ . It's called the Springs fire, and they think it may have been started by a human.
Given that the entire country is in a state of drought at the moment, it’s really no surprise that we’re having a rough fire season. It's quite likely that a lot of the fires won't be put out until rain arrives, which will hopefully be in October.
More than half of the state’s population (which is just over 1.5 million) lives in the Treasure Valley, and so far there haven’t been any major threats to humans in our part of the state.
The smoke is supposed to clear out tonight, which is nice for us, but hopefully it doesn’t mean high winds where the fires are.
Nature has a way of making you pay attention, doesn't she?
