Interesting Commutes Home

NM is on fire again. Its been dry as a dry thing this year and windy too, mercifully cool though so it has not been the tinderbox it has been in past years. However, combination of lightning and powerline fires have been spreading throughout the area. One fire, the Thompson Ridge Fire, is reasonably close to Los Alamos, probably not a worry for reaching our town, but it is at 7500 acres and threatening some local towns. It has made for some interesting commuting the last few days.

Fire started Friday, but started the weird light on Saturday night

During Monday's commute home in an early twilight due to intense smoke, my teeth felt like they were being coated in ash. I got rained on for a bit, then tiny balls of ash rained down on me for a while. Then the sky cleared just enough to allow me to enjoy a blood red circle of a sun on the rest of the ride home.

Missed the red sun, got the weird smoke over the mountains

Tuesday night's commute was accompanied by a light rain of charred pine needles, some blowing ash and a nice garter snake on the trail, sunning itself in the smoke apparently.

Smattering of charred pine needles covering pretty much everything

Tuesday night's mountain smoke

Anyhow, the Thompson Ridge fire is up to nearly 7500 acres, with its pal the Tres Lagunas fire over in the Pecos up at 9000 acres. Both a far cry from the two huge fires in NM over the last two years, but still big enough and close enough to make things genuinely suck for some people nearby and to worry the rest of us.

If you want to see what is going on the best site is really the NM fire info website has been providing spectacular coverage, images and maps. NMfireinfo.com.

Other resource and coverage dump:

LANL has a pretty good air quality data site here. Some other interesting local takes over at La Bikes: here and here. Local photog goes picnicing at the caldera when the wind blows the other way here. LA Daily Post is the easiest online accessable local Los Alamos news source, has had good coverage and photos. Outside Magazine (based just down the road in Santa Fe) posted this interesting little vid on the the Tres Lagunas Fire in Pecos:

Pecos On Fire from Outside Magazine on Vimeo.

and here is what the two local fires look like from nasa images

Update: Really nice post on the fire and the Jemez over at terry wallace's blog.