Storm and smoke

The weather today made the headlines again.  Up until about mid-afternoon the temperature hovered around 101 deg f (~ 38 deg c) - typical for this time of year.  It was still fairly smokey in the valley all day from the fire up north.  There were a number of clouds building throughout the day and I noticed additional smoke building on the hills to the south of us.  It appeared to be a small fire, but the firefighters were able to quickly put it out.  

A short time later, the winds picked up and clouds in the south built up to a series of large thunderheads.  They began to move north bring more wind.  Then, we began to here "bang, bang, bang" on the roof.  Hail!  All we could think of was our poor little tomato plants on the deck.  We quickly grabbed a couple of sheets and ran outside in the pounding hail. J threw the sheets over the tomato scaffold effectively sheltering them from the hail onslaught.  The hail did quickly turn to big drops of icy cold rain.  Ahhhh!  The temperature dropped over 30 degrees in 5 minutes.  

It rained for at least 15 minutes which was wonderful!   Soon, the storm was over, but the clouds remained with occasional thunder.  

A couple of hours later, I noticed the look of the clouds over the hills to the south.  At first I thought another fire had started, or that the little fire I had seen on the hills earlier in the day, but it appears as though all the smoke from the fire to the north had blown up into the clouds giving it a strange orange-yellow-greenish cast.  It looked so much like a sunset, but this was two hours before sunset.   I grabbed my camera and ran out onto the deck and took the photo.  I was very surprised it came out as clear as it did because of all the smoke.  

I also wanted to thank you again for all of the stars and hearts that you have lavished on my blips over the last few days.  You are all so generous and I am truly appreciative.