Deerhorn Valley Update...

Here's the view this evening looking east from Lyons Peak. There are still hotspots burning on the west flank of Elena Mountain, nearly down to where Honey Springs Road crosses from left to right across the photo. I didn't realize these fires were still burning; there's been little smoke from this area all day long. The flanks of Elena Mountain are not very accessible, but some of those hotspots are down near homes. I'm sure there are firefighters on them; we hope for their success this evening...

Harris Fire/Lawson Valley Update...

Here's your evening situation report, from your blogger who is operating in somewhat reduced mental condition – I haven't slept much in the past three days. I'm hoping to fix that problem tonight; I'm heading for bed in just a few minutes.

At top right is the latest MODIS satellite thermal imagery. The most interesting thing about it is the absence of red-hatched areas – which means that the satellite isn't seeing any hotspots. We know from local news reports that this simply cannot be true, because we've seen video that showed fires in those areas. What it must mean is that the overall thermal effects are way down, and in particular that there are no large fires burning.

The photo at right is from the north-looking camera on Lyons Peak, toward Lawson Valley and our home. There is smoke, but it's from areas lower on Lyons Peak itself, as the fire burns downward and northward.

As best I understand it, the biggest remaining risk to Lawson Valley is that the winds, as they return to their normal onshore flow from the southwest or west, will blow the fires now in the Lyons Peak area (and just west of there) toward us. That's the bad news. The good news is that the fires will shortly be in mostly accessible areas, with roads and trails that will let the firefighters get to the burning areas.

We remain very optimistic, and very grateful to the firefighters working so hard to protect our homes&hellip...

Lawson Valley Update...

We just caught some helicopter footage on KUSI (local channel 9) from a helicopter flying slowly over Gaskill Peak on the east end of Lawson Valley. We watched the camera pan slowly from west to south to east, looking at San Miguel, Lyons Peak, Elena Peak, and Lake Barrett. It was crystal-clear from this video that there is NO FIRE anywhere near Lawson Valley – very good news for us. The north flank of Lyons Peak appears to have a fire line about halfway up the slope, burning downward (it burned over the peak last night).

We're ready to go home, but not allowed to yet. Maybe tomorrow...

Camera Site Problems

Update (4:30 PM):

My web site is back up. Apparently the surge of traffic busted my web site. After some thick-headed work (I haven't slept much for three nights), I managed to get the darned thing running again...

Update (10:35 AM):

My web site is still getting hammered by traffic from the exposure on XETV; I've been unable to log in ever since. A clarification, prompted by a reader: if you were lucky enough to already have my cameras page loaded into your web browser, it will still be working – it only needs access to my web site to get that initial page loaded. Everything after that happens by direct access to the HPWREN camera site from your web browser.

If you cannot load my page, you can still get to the HPWREN cameras directly by going to this page. These images are the same as the ones on my site, except that they are not automatically adjusted to fit your monitor, and they are not overlaid with graphics to identify places (so it's a bit harder to orient yourself). It's still very good and current information, of course…

Original Post (9:47 AM):

Watching TV news a few minutes ago, I was surprised to see my web site being highlighted (on XETV 6, Fox News in San Diego) as a source of information. They put up the links to the site hosting the camera site, and showed current photos. That's kinda nice, but...ever since that moment, I've been unable to log into the site! I'm afraid that the publicity has driven the traffic through the roof, and completely overloaded that site. Perhaps it will ease up as people fail to connect to it, and it will come back to life. I sure hope so...

Another Question...

One of my readers (Loretta) just posted a comment about Reservoir Street in Jamul. To the best of my knowledge, that part of Jamul hasn't had any burns at all.

Evacuation Tales...

We evacuated last night just at dusk. I did not take any photos, so I'll just try to paint some “word pictures”.

We left our home and headed due south, uphill, on a private road that the owner opened to help with fire evacuation. This took us to Skyline Truck Trail via Wisecarver Road. From this intersection we got the first views of the pall of smoke over the town of Jamul (to our west at that point) and Lyons Peak (to our south). We could also see a smaller plume of smoke to our east, over the Barrett Lake area. The normal evacuation route would be through Jamul down to state 94, but I was not comfortable heading straight into that smoke.

So instead, we headed east on Skyline Truck Trail, down to Lyons Valley Road, east on there up to Japatul Road, and then out through the town of Descanso to the northeast. As we traveled up Lyons Valley Road, with Gaskill Peak on our left and Barrett Lake on our right, we could see a scene straight out of hell on our right, to the south of Barrett Lake. This was in the Barrett Canyon area, and on the hills to the southeast of Barrett Canyon. Huge flames, smoke plumes, and long trails of wind-blown embers. This was all far enough away from us so that we didn't feel threatened – but close enough to be easily visible and scary-looking.

By the time we got to I-8 in Descanso, it was dark. We drove slowly down to Chula Vista along the freeways, slowly because our pickup was loaded to the overflowing with our stuff, and we were afraid that high speed would blow stuff out. We arrived at our friend's home in Chula Vista around 8:30 PM, and slept fitfully last night.

Just a couple of minutes ago, we got a clear view to the north from Lyons Peak – and there are no smoke plumes in the direction of Lawson Valley. We can also call our house and get our answering machine, so we know our house is still there and still has power…

Answering Some Questions...

Quite a few people have left comments or sent me email with specific questions. In many cases, I know little – and the situation is so fluid that anything I do know now could change five minutes from now. But we know well how hungry people are for information, so here's my best information in response to those questions where I have any information at all:

Kaye Kids poodles on Cinnamon Road: this is out in Deerhorn Valley, on the northeast side, near Elena Peak. I cannot be sure about the situation in that specific area, but there is good reason to be optimistic, as we could see that the ground crews were working hard in that area and had much success. However, we also heard on news conferences that between 40 and 100 homes were lost in Deerhorn Valley, so their success was not 100%. There does not appear to be any fire in that area right now.

Hidden Ridge Road in the town of Jamul: this is about 8 miles east of our home. To the best of my knowledge, that area has not had any burns yet – but it is quite close to Jamul Highlands, where there are quite a few hotspots burning right now. So long as the winds stay down, I'm quite optimistic that that area will remain undamaged.

Several people asked general questions about the town of Jamul and the Steele Canyon area. So far as I know, the town of Jamul has not lost any homes, but there are several hotspots currently burning in the Jamul Highlands area. Steele Canyon I know less about, but I have not heard any news reports about damage there – just that there was lots of firefighting activity there. Also, we know that the Millar Ranch Road area was entirely engulfed in fire (though the firefighters somehow managed to save every home there, we've heard). Millar Ranch Road is just a short distance west of where Steele Canyon High School is, and also just west of the intersection of 94 and Steele Canyon Road.

To the other people who wrote with specific questions: I'm sorry, but I just don't know anything about the areas you've asked about. That's neither good news or bad news; I've been focused almost completely on our area, and ignoring almost everything else I've heard.

Watching from Chula Vista...

The photos at right show the view this morning from Lyons Peak this morning. About an hour ago the fire moved right through the peak – at one point we could see flames lapping at the towers and buildings up there. Amazingly, we never lost the camera feed, and it's still working fine!

The top photo (click to enlarge) shows the view east, toward Jamul. The smoke so obscures things that we can't really tell anything about conditions away from the peak.

The bottom photo shows the view north, toward our home. Again, we can't really tell much for sure – except that there is no major fire in that direction.

What is giving us more comfort at the moment is the latest MODIS satellite thermal imagery. This is the bottom image at right (again, click to enlarge). I believe this data is from roughly 4 AM this morning. The red hatched circles show hotspots detected on that pass. The orange ones are hotspots detected not on this pass, but within the past 24 hours, and the black ones are older than that.

I'm blogging from a Mac, and I don't know how to annotate pictures on it, so I haven't marked where we live on this map. The long, skinny reservoir that runs mainly east-west is Loveland Reservoir; we live about halfway between the right end of that and the MODIS splotches just below it. That works out to about 2 miles between our home and the firefront.

From news video we're watching in our friend's home, the Jamul Highlands area has several hotspots burning, but we didn't see any burned homes. The news commentator has mentioned that there were few houses damaged or lost in that area – perhaps none at all. A co-worker sent an email last night saying that all the homes on Millar Ranch Road were saved – which seems miraculous given the flames we saw there last night. The fact that the winds have died way down is greatly helping the firefighters. This gives us much hope...