spacealien_vamp (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spacealien_vamp) wrote2020-09-10 07:18 am
spacealien_vamp) wrote2020-09-10 07:18 am
Apocalypse - Bay Area edition
On the day of my last post, we had a freak thunderstorm that terrified my border collie, who caused all kinds of damage to my house.
Another thing that resulted from the thunderstorm was that the lightning started forest fires all over the state. In the past month, 2 million acres have burned. As of this writing, the fires are still burning. We are on day 24 of consecutive "spare the air" warnings due to poor air quality from all the smoke, which is a record. Fortunately for me, I'm not in a fire danger zone, though one of the larger fires is in the southern part of my county.
Then, yesterday, we had this:
The morning started off darker than usual. Skies were gray with a strange yellow tint, and cloud cover was so thick I couldn't see the sun. This isn't particularly unusual, as morning fog is pretty standard here, but the color was off and it kept getting darker. The above picture was taken from my front yard at 10:30am, at which point the area had gotten so dark that all the streetlights came on. Smoke and ash from a forest fire in the north had gotten high into the air and covered the entire region, blocking out the sunlight. Temperatures were ~30 degrees colder than they had been just the day before. (That was nice, actually, as we were having a record-breaking heat wave.)
The strange orange-brown skies lasted all day. It was surreal, like being surrounded by a movie special effect. This morning the sky is back to a more normal gray color, though with a faint brownish tinge. My car is coated with specks of ash all over. (It was so heavy on the windshield when I came home from work last night that it caused the automatic wipers to turn on.)
Not much else is going on around here. I'm at the peak of fig and grape harvest season, and I'm also getting a good crop of peppers. One benefit of the extreme heat is that it looks like it has prompted at least one of my kumquat trees to start flowering. I'm planning to plant out my fall veggies this weekend. I managed to schedule enough days off starting next week and running through November that I'll be using up nearly all of my use-or-lose vacation hours. At least that will give me more time to work in the garden and tidy the house.
The rest of my August was eaten up by playing Animal Crossing on my Nintendo Switch. I discovered that it was lucky I bought it last year, because when I was telling a coworker about the game and she decided she wanted it, all retail outlets were sold out of the Switch. (Only the Switch Lite was left.) It seems people have been using software bots to buy all the devices at retail price and then offer them (marked up by a couple hundred dollars) on Amazon.
Another thing that resulted from the thunderstorm was that the lightning started forest fires all over the state. In the past month, 2 million acres have burned. As of this writing, the fires are still burning. We are on day 24 of consecutive "spare the air" warnings due to poor air quality from all the smoke, which is a record. Fortunately for me, I'm not in a fire danger zone, though one of the larger fires is in the southern part of my county.
Then, yesterday, we had this:
The morning started off darker than usual. Skies were gray with a strange yellow tint, and cloud cover was so thick I couldn't see the sun. This isn't particularly unusual, as morning fog is pretty standard here, but the color was off and it kept getting darker. The above picture was taken from my front yard at 10:30am, at which point the area had gotten so dark that all the streetlights came on. Smoke and ash from a forest fire in the north had gotten high into the air and covered the entire region, blocking out the sunlight. Temperatures were ~30 degrees colder than they had been just the day before. (That was nice, actually, as we were having a record-breaking heat wave.)
The strange orange-brown skies lasted all day. It was surreal, like being surrounded by a movie special effect. This morning the sky is back to a more normal gray color, though with a faint brownish tinge. My car is coated with specks of ash all over. (It was so heavy on the windshield when I came home from work last night that it caused the automatic wipers to turn on.)
Not much else is going on around here. I'm at the peak of fig and grape harvest season, and I'm also getting a good crop of peppers. One benefit of the extreme heat is that it looks like it has prompted at least one of my kumquat trees to start flowering. I'm planning to plant out my fall veggies this weekend. I managed to schedule enough days off starting next week and running through November that I'll be using up nearly all of my use-or-lose vacation hours. At least that will give me more time to work in the garden and tidy the house.
The rest of my August was eaten up by playing Animal Crossing on my Nintendo Switch. I discovered that it was lucky I bought it last year, because when I was telling a coworker about the game and she decided she wanted it, all retail outlets were sold out of the Switch. (Only the Switch Lite was left.) It seems people have been using software bots to buy all the devices at retail price and then offer them (marked up by a couple hundred dollars) on Amazon.
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Also, though haven't been playing as much recently, spent all of May playing AC, should visit each others islands at some point XD *huugs*
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My dogs at home don't seem to mind. My work beagle sneezes a lot. I imagine the smoke must be worse for their sensitive noses.
That would be fun! I can text you my friend code.
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Ha ha! Yes. Yes it has.