Common Items #8: A must for every home

Today was rather eventful even though it was a quiet day overall for us.  It was a dull, yellow-tinged grey day, filled with acrid smoke.  

Just about 10 miles to the north of us, a major fire is raging.  It was so bad that it created its own weather.  Please see the extra photos.  None of these were taken by me.  They are spectacular to say the least.  

The National Weather Service issued a warning for our area about the "tornadic pyrocumulonimbus" storm creating a "fire tornado".  I had heard about them before, but had never seen one.  Apparently there were at least 5 of them that occurred in the course of two hours.  

Because of the fire, hundreds of homes have been evacuated as the fire spreads to the east towards a very populated area.  

On top of all of this, a very fast moving thunderstorm system "blew" up from the west bringing high winds, thunder, lightening, and for us here, torrential rain for about 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, it was just a localized rain.  The mountain immediately to the north of us was hit by lightening and started another wildfire.  Thankfully, our fantastic fire fighters were able to contain it fairly quickly.  

We were hoping that the rain would cool things down a bit and clean the air a bit.  It did, for about an hour.  Then the billows of smoke came pouring back into the valley.  It was so bad that I could not see across the street.  

With nightfall, it seems to cleared a bit and we have been able to open the windows (we don't have air conditioning).  But it will be a hot night.  

As I was reading the news, I found an interesting Twitter comment:

"Please tell us what sacrifices we must throw into the Fire Tornado to make the 2020 apocalypse end. "  


As a very wise man once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." And another very wise man also said, "This too shall pass." 

In view of the smoke filled valley, I thought another "Common Items" photo was in order, and I thought that fire extinguisher would be appropriate.  

Thank you all for your very kind hearts and stars for yesterday's blip "Hole in the Clouds".  I was astonished to see that it made it to the Popular pages.  Thank you!