Last time I went to town to go do the shopping, banking and stuff I noticed that the "Fire Danger" sign at the entrance to our neighborhood had been changed from "moderate" to "high."
This happens pretty much every summer because — in spite of the fact that we allegedly live in "the Rainy Pacific Northwest" — the months of June through September typically are quite dry and sometimes we will go 60-90 days without a single drop of rain, or just a few brief showers.
With all the huge forests we have around here, 60 days without rain means we're basically surrounded by a giant pile of bonfire wood! All it takes is one careless idiot tossing a cigarette butt from a car and we can end up with major problems.
Thankfully it has not been too bad around our part of the state so far, and we hope it stays that way... thanks, in part, to an unusually large number of foggy and misty mornings that tend to soak everything in fog drip.
Meanwhile some dear friends of ours who live in the east side of the state of Washington are not faring nearly so well as they are sitting in the middle of the out of control wildfires in the greater Spokane area.
Last we checked they had had to evacuate their home as it was directly in the path of a 3000-acre fire that was spreading rapidly due to high winds. Apparently the neighbor ignored the evacuation order and stayed behind to continually soak the roof, walls and nearby vegetation for several houses for something like 20 hours straight, and those houses (including our friends') survived.
I can't even imagine what it might be like to have to leave everything behind and just get to safety, with the knowledge that maybe everything you have in life is going to be completely gone when you come back.
Underscores the importance of always having a "go bag" ready when something like an evacuation order comes through so you can just grab it and go and have your basic supplies and your most important papers with you.
In our case, we also have four cats to take with us so we have cat carriers and they sit around (open) in the house open so the cats are familiar with them and don't feel scared like they are necessarily about to go to the vet.
Regardless of where you feel like you want to lay the blame for it, it seems like we do have more and more wildfires every year, and they're often getting closer and closer to where we live here.
Thankfully, we have only been able to see flames on distant Hillside and not that close to here, but we often have days during the summer where the air is so thick with smoke that you cannot even see the sun and you wouldn't know whether it was sunny or cloudy.
In the meantime, all we can do is pray for our friends and hope that they still have a house to come back to when the danger passes. For now it seems OK, but the fire is not yet fully contained.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great week ahead!
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2026.08.03 01:32 PDT
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