Northern California is on fire

While we have our normal late Summer fog, much of Northern California is more than a bit smokey. The red arrows in the satellite picture from this morning point to smoke plumes from three major fires (plus others are visible) (click on picture for larger version).

The fire at the upper center east of Redding, California: UPDATED: Sheriff declares state of emergency as Ponderosa Fire threatens 3,000 homes, forces more evacuations.

The fire at the right east of Chico, California: Chips Fire inches closer to Seneca.

The new fire at the left in our own Mendocino County: Wildfire burning near Covelo grows overnight.

Last week's big fire in Lake County, California is just producing hazy, but significant, smoke: Full containment of Wye Fire expected Saturday. Containment, of course, just means the fire is surrounded, but still burning.

CALFIRE maintains a web site summarizing incidents in California with links to a few more details.

The InciWeb web site which lists (with links) fires on federal lands shows 36 active fires in California, mostly Northern California. These active fires - only the ones on federal lands - involve 451,330 acres. When you add in the fires being handled by CALFIRE you get over 500,000 acres actively burning in Northern California.

Why is this happening? How about Climate Change! It's already impacting us and we are not prepared.