The sunlight slanting in through the window is casting the red beams of a gorgeous sunset on the floor — except it’s 1:00 in the afternoon.
The sun is a deep orange ball high in the sky that appears only slightly brighter than a full moon. The online weather station says our skies are clear and sunny, no cloud cover. What we see up there is all smoke.
And we’re not even all that close to the fires in our area. We went out for a drive after church this morning. It gets much worse up in Del Rio. I feel for the people who live there: dealing with heavy smoke, some being forced to evacuate due to approaching flames and the dumping of flame retardant by aerial tankers.
Emergency Management says they’re getting a handle on the situation. I applaud these brave men and women fighting a fierce fire in rugged terrain. A fire fueled by 50 years of dead, dry brush and debris. It’s been that long since this mountain burned.
This tanker (looks like a C130 to me) was flying over our house most of the day yesterday.
There are several helicopters being used as well. One, a twin rotor model (Chinook?), spooked a friend of mine pretty badly. She was driving along the road that runs beside the French Broad river in Del Rio (Hwy 25/70) and thought the chopper was going to land on her roof as it dropped in to scoop up water from the river in a big bucket. It was so LOUD!
The fire nearest us is across the French Broad river (and the highway) from us, so it is not going to get here. The smoke makes it unpleasant to be outside, but not as bad as it could be, and is elsewhere. We are blessed.
