Driving South

I noticed that most places south of about Greenfield and King City had visible smoke in the air but you couldn't always smell the smoke because it was usually higher than where you were driving. The only real exception to this was driving along the coast especially in the fog between San Luis Obsipo and Santa Maria. It is likely that because of increased heat a variety of places are having much more fog off the ocean (likely advection fog) this year. So, along the coast possibly as far as Santa Barbara or further south fog is more normal later into the year because of advection fog off the ocean. Whereas inland the heat is just turning more and more areas into being more like a desert statewide.

This only begins to change either with enough altitude or once you get north of Redding into the mountains. But, even there the lack of precipitation from a normal year still affects the forests and makes them easier to burn which is why the Carr fire is creeping towards Castle Crags a little more each day especially in any time of day the winds are bad.

So, whether new fires are started by accident or weather or lightning from thunderstorms or from tires blowing out on semi trucks or from arson like many southern California fires are, once they get started they often seem almost impossible to put out, especially if they are wildfires in areas where there are no roads almost at all. Then it becomes 10 or 100 times more difficult to put these fires out.