Living in a haze

For the past two or more weeks California has been dealing with quite a few fires. Although, on a personal level I have not had to deal with living with the heartbreak of losing my home or pets or other personal treasures, I have had to only look around my "corner of the world" and see how we are all affected by these fires. We live in the Santa Clara Valley, aka Silcon Valley, where we live between the Santa Cruz mountains and the Mt. Hamilton range. In other words we can look all around and see mountains to the east, west and south of us. Because the fires have been widespread, and many in very remote locations, residents of this valley have been living in a haze. Everyday we are reminded of what is going on around us. We are spoiled to the point that residents of this valley usually see blue skies and sunshine during the spring and summer months and we take for granted seeing the mountains around us. So for the past few weeks we can barely see the mountains, if we can see them at all. Instead, we see pink or red sunrises and sunsets through the haze. We have not seen blue skies for more than two weeks. Zhakee from Sierra Nevada Ramblings has written an excellent post about the fires around her, too. Visit her blog to see what she has to say about it. Below are some photos I have taken from here in my neighborhood.

The photo above was taken June 13 in the evening looking east from our front yard. Notice the reddish glow to the sky. Below is the sun just before sunset. I took this shot from standing on my front patio. That's a power line cutting across the lower half of the picture.
This photo below was taken in the evening of June 25, standing in the same location as above. Not much different from the June 13 sky, is it?

And this photo was taken from my back patio, (with more power lines in the way) early the next morning, June 26.

These next three photos were all taken in the evening of June 26. I walked over toward the hospital, trying to get a decent photo of the Santa Cruz mountains (sans power lines). Again, you can see the reddish haze, and the mountains look so far away, yet they are only a few miles away. Yesterday, while walking to work these hills were not visible at all.

Walking back home I took a photo of the hills to the south of us, called Blossom Hill.

And this photo was taken looking southwest. These hills would be part of the southern portion of the Mt. Hamilton range.

Be sure to visit Zhakee at Sierra Nevada Ramblings to see her pix and read her post.