The Weather is Here

Yesterday's thunderheads over the San Gabriel Mountains were an anniversary reminder of the pyrocumulus clouds that resulted from the Station Fire It began on August 26th of 2009 and is still under investigation.

The Station Fire was at last fully contained on October 16th, 2009. The largest fire in the history of the Angeles National Forest, it destroyed homes, burned over 160,000 acres of forest (250 square miles) and killed two firefighters. The spring rains that followed flooded catch basins with tons of ash. Officials say we'll be digging out of it for years. The cause of the Station Fire was arson.

Those of us who hike the mountains and canyons will probably always look back at the Station Fire as the the one that changed everything, the worst one ever. Let's hope so.

We've had a cool--well--cold summer, by Pasadena standards. Some of us complained of having to wear sweaters even during the day, unheard of in southern California in July. But our heat wave has finally come. Brush fires have popped up in Kern County, the Grapevine and the San Bernardino National Forest, to name a few. John and I got caught in traffic the other day while firefighters put out a brush fire along the 210 freeway in Glendora. With rain in the mountains and flash floods in the desert, you could say things are getting back to normal.