Fires Update...

I'll start tonight with MODIS satellite thermal imagery for the county, with a few annotations of my own. The black, orange, and red areas in the image at right shows progressively more recent “hot spots” detected by the MODIS satellite. It's easy to see the two major fires in the county on this image – the Witch Fire to the north, and the Harris Fire to the south. I added purple lines to show the approximate course and branching activity of the fires. Both fires started at the extreme northeast end of their extent (the upper right) and moved WSW (slightly down from leftwards). Both seem to be marching inexorably to the sea. Both are expanding in the north south dimension, slowly north, southerly in wind-driven bursts.

In both the image above, and the more detailed image of the Harris Fire at right, I've marked the area where we live in green, the paths of the fires in purple, and the area where my niece lives in yellow. At right you can see, vividly, why we've been somewhat anxious all day: the Harris Fire is just a few miles from our home, moving rapidly – but, thankfully, not toward us. We're very aware that this could change in short order, so we'll be watching closely all night tonight to make sure it doesn't surprise us. So far the winds have not changed direction, though they have slowed down.

At right is a panorama made by stitching together the views from the east-facing and south-facing cameras on Lyons Peak. You can see here the two areas that concern us the most. Roughly in the middle of the photo is an area burning intensely, moving northward up Barrett Canyon (toward Barrett Lake). This is moving very slowly northward against the wind. If it broke out to the north, it could come at us from our east, driven by whatever wind remains tomorrow. To the right of the photo, you can see the fragmented burning areas along Honey Springs Road, State 94, and Otay Lakes Road. These have been mainly moving WNW, toward the southern reaches of the town of Jamul, and Proctor Valley. If the winds shifted, these could threaten us; at the moment they mostly present a threat to the eastern edges of Chula Vista (especially Eastlake).

Earlier this evening, we started packing our vehicles. We knocked off after about three hours of work, because (a) we were tired, and (b) things looked a bit less immediately threatening (and they remain that way). So we're going to keep a sharp eye out tonight – we'll get up every couple of hours to check the Lyons Peak cameras, and check for new satellite imagery.