Yesterday, my husband and some friends headed over to the coast to hang out in Carpinteria for the day. On our way there we saw the beginning of two of the many wildfires that are now burning in Southern California. There always seems to be a fire just starting when we head down there.

Then when we headed back we couldn't believe how much worse the fires had gotten. As we drew closer and closer to Ventura, the sky darkened with thick brown smoke. Those little start-up fires had been fed into huge blazes now by the Santa Ana winds and plenty of dry brush.

A huge cloud of brown ash was creeping out over the ocean. When we got on the 126, it just seemed to get darker and darker. We kept joking how it was the end of the world or something. My husband said in all his years growing up in Santa Paula — which faces wild fires practically every year — he never saw so much smoke and ash as we did yesterday. It was like the world turned sepia tones for an hour or so.

I took some photos as we drove with my husband's camera phone of all the smoke and darkened skies.

Of course the one drawing the most attention is in Malibu where all the celebrities and rich people live. We saw the smoke from the Malibu fire, but we also saw three other huge blazes. So you know it would be nice if there was some information about those fires too.

 

















This is where we saw the beginning of the fire on the way there. By the time we returned it had spread over the hill and was putting up tons of smoke. If you ignore the big plumes behind this mountain and pretend they are blue skies, that is how the fire looked on our way to Carp, just a little bit of smoke, but thanks to the wind in a few hours this thing was huge!




This was taken Oct. 22 as the winds were shifting and beginning to blow the smoke over Bakersfield: