Toad in the Hole

We ran into some California summer weather on the way home from visiting some gardens in Sonoma County on Sunday.

First “Uh-oh” when Petaluma’s main drag turned to aim us at this vista:

In some places and conditions this might have been a fogbank, but no: smoke. Very white smoke, so probably only a grass fire so far. Therre was a fogbank at the coast all day, and it produced some serious wind as it drew inland in the evening; this of course moved the fire relatively fast.

Traffic was slow going past it, but at least the highway was upwind so the smoke blew the other way.

When we passed the flame front, the sound was almost liquid, if a bit more crisp, like shallow water flowing over an edge.

This was such an insignificant fire it barely rated a mention in the news; KTVU had some footage so that got played, buy the real news was a new fire up near Yosemite. Here, grass got burned, the oaks in the fields were probably OK, and someone lost “a couple of outbuildings” but not the main house. Nesting season is over for most critters, so I doubt there were many casualties. I could have outrun the flame front myself without breaking a sweat, and most of the animal inhabitants of the grass can be assumed to be faster than I am. We saw a bunch of horses clustered uphill, but the fire was nowhere near them and was moving the other way.

The grass that burned was mostly a species that was introduced because livestock relish it; somebody lost a month’s fodder for their (probably dairy) cattle, in what’s already a bad year for most of us.

These photos show a bit more detail when viewed large.