I was outside playing with the kids today for most of the afternoon. Between 4 & 5 I noticed that it was getting hazy, and the sunlight was turning orange....it felt more like fall sunlight, than height of summer sunlight. By 7 it looked like this


This is from our backyard looking southeast.


This is also from our backyard looking north. We closed up the house and cranked on the A/C right after (before?) I took these...with that much crap in the air, I didn't want to trigger an asthma attack. allanh and his lovely husband Randy came over for dinner and told us the fire was somewhere close to the 9 in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  At least we don't have to worry about the fire reaching us...but the sky looks AWFUL.