I opened up the blinds this morning to an intensely smokey sky, immediately knowing that it’s not the usual fog we get here in San Francisco, an ominous sign for what’s currently happening in the Bay Area. As I’ve written on Monday, the region is experiencing a historic hot weather pattern, combined with freak thunderstorm conditions this past Sunday. This uniquely combustable mix have finally cracked open the gates to hell as the lightning have lit several wildfires that are burning right now. Evacuation orders are in affect for areas in the Santa Cruz mountains and Vacaville, some homes have already been destroyed; and lest we forget, we are still in the middle of a bloody pandemic.
This is not good at all.
Slightly better news for San Francisco is that the heatwave is largely over for us; we’re solidly in the 70s during the day (some of us would say that’s still rather hot, spoiled brats) while rest of the Bay Area continues to suffer through high 90s and 100s that will last for the rest of this week. Surely that’s not going to help the fire-fighting efforts, and judging from what I’m reading on the news, we’re only in the beginning stages of containing the many blazes in the area. The governor of California have declared a state of emergency, which is somewhat hilarious because haven’t we been in a sort of state of emergency since early March?
2020 cannot get any more weird and horrible if it tried, and try it will: there’s still more than four months of the year left, and November elections are looming in the horizon. At this point it’s probably better to be prepared for the worst than holding to an optimistic position that things will only improve from here on out, that surely this is the bottom. I have no doubts that all of this will pass and we’ll get back to our preferred normal, but any thoughts of a fast resolution should be out the proverbial window by now. I certainly did not think that we’ll be sitting here in August facing another school year of remote learning, and yet here we are.
Right now I can only pray that the wildfires aren’t going to get much worse, and people in the area will be safe.
My constant companion.