Smokin'

The Sturgeon Moon rises over Mt Diablo Tuesday evening

It's Tuesday afternoon and it's 99F here in the Inland Valley.

I spent a cool two hours making up some more PVC irrigation plumbing in the Ancestral Diggins. I made a mad dash out to lunch, HomeDepot, and the grocery store. The local weather station had 97F when I got home.

I spent a cool couple of hours looking around the Internet for Primary Election News, and listening to some radio. That's when I heard the top of the hour news report smoke and fire in Mount Diablo's Curry Canyon. The news reader threw it to the WeatherDude who said it's 108F up on the mountain.

There's a sliver lining today however, little to no winds. There's still about three hours of daylight left to get every helicopter they can up there for initial attack. No structures threatened at this time 5:21PM PDT.

I've been watching streaming video from KPIX Channel 5 and watching KTVU Channel 2 on HDTV. KTVU has the bird's eye view, and I've seen three textbook drops from the CalFire S-2T bombers. With little wind, the pilots are laying down a swath of Fire Retardant ahead of the fire. When the fire marches into the retardant-covered fuel, a huge plume of white smoke goes up, and the flames dim.

I just heard a resident from near the fire call into the Channel 2 News. She said there was maybe 50 structures up in Curry Creek Canyon. She said a mix of homes, trailers, and outbuildings. She said there were many fire trucks and police cruisers on narrow Curry Canyon Rd. She didn't see any signs of an evacuation, and said the wind was calm.

10PM Update
CalFire reports the 375 acre Mt Diablo Fire is 50% contained. Air operations ended at dark. Air attack will resme at first light. No structures lost today, no evacuations...yet.

Lack of wind has been crucial as high temps and low relative humidity will reign for another day at least. Fortunately, a cold front is forecast to come through for the weekend, bringing colder temps an a chance of rain.

Meanwhile...
Back in the  Atlantic, Tropical Storm Danielle became a hurricane, briefly strengthened to a Category 2 Hurricane, and died back to tropical storm strength, before becoming a Category 1 Hurricane again. Danielle is casting about the Mid-Atlantic headed WNW at around 18mph.

San Francisco Bay Today
Record heat all around the Bay. Wiser heads appear to be prevailing in the America's Cup kerfuffle. Way to get it together Stakeholders!