Our beautiful spring and early summer weather was idyllic. Rose and I had dinner on the deck every evening, and we were often outside reading until ten or eleven PM. But as things got dryer and temperatures pushed into the low 80s each day, we grew concerned. Then Zeus sent thunderbolts from the sky and set Beringia on fire.

Lightning strikes have caused hundreds of fires across the state. Careless people have added more. We’ve been breathing heavy smoke for most of the week. At times it’s so heavy that people drive with their headlights on. There has even been some ash-fall. We haven’t seen conditions this bad since 2004. By day, the sun is an evil, Eye-of-Sauron orb in the sky, red or orange and malevolent.

Map of fires across Alaska on 27 June 2015

It’s hard to describe the effects of living with forest fires all around you. That smell of wood smoke that is so pleasant when you catch a whiff of a campfire, or the first woodstove smoke of the fall, becomes an overpowering, all-surrounding, oppressive, smothering blanket of filth that you have to breathe. You get a sore throat, a harsh, deeper voice, and often a headache. Fortunately, we get a reprieve at home using air filters in the bedroom at night. But few buildings keep it out, and homes here don’t have air conditioning, so you often have to have windows open for cooling. Personally, I get a sort of trapped feeling, like I’m an animal in a burning barn that needs to get out.  But one look at the map of fires around the state shows that there aren’t many places to go to escape. A deep breath of clean air is a wonderful thing that you realize you took for granted.

A smoky drive in to work

The internet provides detailed information (e.g., here and here) about where fires are located, how big they are, what actions (if any) are being taken in fighting them, and what air quality is like. Most people have a tab open on their browser to occasionally peek at one or more of these sites.

Air quality 27 June 2015

We have some cooler weather with clouds and rain for the weekend. It’s very welcome, and it helps a little. But with so many big fires burning we could be in for a long, smoky second half of summer. There are hundreds of firefighters in the state fighting some of the blazes, but they only fight the ones threatening people and their buildings, leaving a lot of land to burn unattended. We live in big, wild country, but this is not the way we like to be reminded of that.

Apocalyptic skies