Florida Wildfires

 

Tropicana Field this morning, in downtown St. Petersburg. The smoke from area wildfires is so thick that my house smells like smoke, and my clothes reeked of it when I came in from taking  Buddy for his walk at 7:30.

We ended up cutting it short --or I did, he wanted to keep walking.  Over 3,000 acres are burning up in Northeast Alachua County, and Bradford County.   I don't see how the people up there can breathe.  My house up there is in southwest Alachua county, not near the fires at all, but it's near the prairie and all that dry brush that surrounds the neighborhood makes me nervous.
From BayNews9:
Lake County near Orlando continues to be one of the worst spots with homes near Wekiva being evacuated Monday. Further east, more than 6,000 acres have burned near Ormond Beach in fires that have ongoing for more than a week now.
Jim Harrell, a spokesman for the state Division of Forestry, says about 260 separate fires were burning more than 20,545 acres in the state.

On the plus side, it was 58 in parts of the bay area, feels real good for this time of the year.
More info from the Gainesville Sun.  including this pic of the Starke Fires:

 

Comments

[pam]

We used to live in Wekiva, and then moved a little north to Deltona during the last horrible drought... Wildfires were EVERYwhere.

I was out back one day in Deltona and across the [then dry] lake lightning struck a lawn and fire started immediately... thank goodness the guy was home and grabbed a hose, but I had called the fire department... having them on speed dial, of course....

I'm very afraid of fire.

[Leanne]

woah. :(

[FC]

Pretty smoky up in nawth Florida.
My JEEP was covered in white ash this morning when Jr and I headed to school. He said it reminded him of Dante's Peak or some volcano disaster movie.

This could be building to a summer of '98 scenario with cold dry air invading the area (49 this morn).

In that same issue of the Sun that you link to is this link ...

http://gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070508/LOCAL/705080322/-1/news

I guess I'll be looking for another eye doctor.

If he was smart enough to get through med school, why .....

[kenju]

I hope that is not close to you, Laura. Take care!

[Laura]

Pam, I had no idea it was so bad up by the Deltona area, but it makes sense of course, the more that I think about it. It does make me nervous during the dry season as well. When we lived up in N. Fla, so many lakes were drying up, a pitiful sight to see. Good thing the guy was home at the time, whoa.

Leanne, it smells like someone was smoking in the house.

FC, I was wondering how your area would come through with all that scrub brush everywhichway you look.
As for the link, I can't believe that guy! You'd think a Doctor.... oh n/m. LOL, I've got to shake my head, the pervs are everywhere!

Kenju, not close to us at all, and I just knocked on wood to keep it that way.

[misti]

We've had bad smoke from fires in Collier county coming into Broward and Dade. Closing Alligator Alley again after about the zillionth time in four weeks. There's been two Everglades fires, now there's one in Picayune plus little ones all around Lee and Collier. Geez, we need that Sub Tropical system to move back this way and dump some rain!

[Laura]

Andrea brought us some beautiful weather, clear skies and cool breezes!
There was ash on our car yesterday morning, friends of ours had ash all over their patio as well.
Rick said the shop was full of smoke, you could see a layer of it hovering over the ceiling.
A friend of ours (Hi Paul!) said that up in Gainesville,you could see ashes in the air on Tuesday. Bet a lot of people up there had breathing problems.

I remember living in Miami and smelling the smoke coming in from the Everglades whenever there were fires out there.
The rainy season cant come soon enough!