The First Surprises
The recovery after the burn holds one surprise after another. The first surprise was how quickly the thistles started growing back. They didn’t even wait for rain. It only took a few weeks and they were sprouting.
The second surprise was how quickly the grasses came up with just a couple of inches of rain. And they’ve been nurtured with additional rain and are growing rapidly and spreading.
With the grasses growing the color combination of the hills was rapidly becoming green and black, not a combination of colors that I found particularly appealing. The colors looked harsh. I longed for the more familiar greens and browns typical of Southern California hillsides in spring (at least when we’re not in the midst of a drought year).
Well, as they say, be careful of what you wish (or long) for. You just might get it.
Surprise Number 3
Two nights ago – Christmas Eve or more correctly, early Christmas morning – we were awakened at 3:30 in the morning with a fierce wind storm, one that ranked among the strongest we’ve experienced in the eighteen years we’ve lived her. After a half hour of trying to ignore it I got up. Looking out the back window the air was so thick with dust I couldn’t see the mountain peak a half mile from the house, even though there was a full moon. Looking down the canyon I couldn’t see the lights of Foothill Ranch, the community less than a mile away, the air was so full of dust.
When dawn came several hours later the winds had died down a little but not until they blew a rain gutter off our roof. We later learned that we were experiencing gusts of up to 75 miles per hour. Downstairs the window sills and floor were both covered in soot, even though the windows were closed.
We had noticed that the soot was fine enough to work its way through the smallest crack with even a moderate wind. But with a little over four inches of rain since the fires I assumed all the soot still on the hillsides had worked itself into the soil. How wrong I was.
Apparently it was still sitting on top of the soil waiting to be disturbed. And surely a 75 mph wind was capable of disturbing it. While the wind was still blowing it wasn’t safe to go outside without a mask because the fine particles of soot would surely get lodged in your lungs.
One other thing that was amazing that morning was what appeared to be smoke billowing out of Modjeska Canyon, just a few miles away. We can’t see the canyon from our house but the ridge that separates us is clearly visible. Huge clouds of what looked like thick brown smoke were billowing up from just beyond the ridge. I figured a house was on fire. What a tragedy that would be although the thought occurred to me that the fire wouldn’t spread – there wasn’t anything left to burn, at least on the
But after looking at the cloud more closely and carefully observing its behavior, it became clear it wasn’t acting like smoke at all. Instead it was clouds of soot being swept up the canyon sides and into the air.
So what was the big surprise? It’s this; the hillsides are largely brown again. Why? Because much of ethe soot was blown away. Here’s a picture.
Hillsides blown clear of soot
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