During the weekend of June 21-22 8000 lightning strikes started 800 fires in Northern California from Big Sur to the Oregon border. According the the San Francisco Chronicle, “By contrast, 574 lightning-sparked fires blackened about 86 square miles in Northern California in all of 2007.”

The San Francisco Bay Region (and the rest of California) has had its driest late spring since records have been kept, beginning in 1850. Normally, about 5 inches of rain fall in March-May; this year about 1/2 an inch fell in those three months.

Air National Guard MAFFS units from Wyoming, North Carolina, and Colorado are being sent to the region. Firecrews from Oregon, Washington, Iowa and Alaska have arrived to help.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has high resolution images of the region that show plumes of smoke filling the northern 1/3rd of the state.

Photos below are from a hike we took today to Mount Tamalpais, which is located in Marin County, about 10 miles north of San Francisco proper.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 1:55 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.