I wish you guys could see this area today
 

It's surreal and apocalyptic feeling. There are mushroom clouds in the foothills at the edge of town where today's high winds have pushed the fires. Occasionally the wind will push the smoke away just enough that you can see a tree explode sending flames what seems like 100 feet in the air. Here at home ash falls like snow at certain periods of the day and as the sun sets it takes on an eerie blood red hue.

It's fun (in a relative sense) to watch the bombers and helicopters disappear into the smoke, drop their payload and escape out the back end all throughout the day. All that work, 24 hours a day and the fires are growing not diminishing. Temps above 110 daily and up to 30 mph winds were present all this week. Today the temps feel like the lower 100's but the wind is as high as ever. Many homes on the outskirts of town are threatened today. I think we may be stuck with these fires all summer.

Take a few pics and post them.

Here are some from the local paper. This is the Moon fire burning near a small community called Igo near the West edge of Redding.

http://www.redding.com/photos/galler...fire-igo/6274/

I'll try to snap some shots this weekend.

The frightening thing is that those are photos of just one of the fires. I can't imagine how much smoke there is in the air from all of the fires.

So my in laws are coming in from Oregon to visit. They're planning on heading west after the weekend with us to see the Redwoods. Guess they should skip it eh?

I don't know if they have it as bad as we do right now. I know there are some fires toward the coast but I haven't heard how bad.

My Sister and her family from Manteca, CA arrived in town yesterday. On their way driving through they told me the smoke was just incredible.

Wow
 

Crazy pictures of what is going on there. You should post some locally of what's happening near you. As Surfah said, my parents were planning on going back up through there after there visit to SLC, but I think it's for a sure no bueno.

I just returned from the Redwoods last week (Sunday the 6th). We were about an hour north of Eureka and an hour south of Crescent City. The weather was perfect on the coast - best I've ever seen it there. Highs were in the low to mid 70's, lows in the mid 50's.

There was no smoke within about 60 miles of the coast. Getting to and from the coast from Redding was a different story, as it was very smoky through about 50 miles of highway. They actually closed the main East-west highway through Northern California this weekend due to fire danger.

Bottom line - if you can get there, the Redwoods are great right now. We're heading back in about 2 weeks.