Now for something completely different. Beyond the VC and tech-wonk persona usually evident in this blog, I have another life as a conservation volunteer and contributor. Since my fellow Californians to the south are rightly distracted by the flames at their doorstep, I thought I'd take advantage of that knowledge to do a little backgrounding for non-CA readers regarding the holocaust you are likely seeing on the tube this evening.

It starts with climate. California enjoys what's called a Mediterranean climate - because it's just like you-know-where - and it's one of the reasons the real estate prices are so high. Depending on where in the north/south span of the state one is located, there will be 4 - 6 months that are largely damp to wet, and the remainder of the year is warm and completely dry with blue skies. One of the big reasons California is the home of the hot tub, the open air mall, and al fresco dining.

Wonderful for us humans with our artificial water supplies. A bit tough for the plant life. How to survive a drought that lasts half a year, every year? The big redwoods do it by sieving water from the air with their needles, but that only works in the coastal fog belt. Most of the native plant life has been evolved to be drought adapted. The plant community best adapted is called the chaparral. It's a collection of scrubby, woody plants like coyote bush, California sagebrush and manzanita. Here in mid-California, the chaparral occurs in the dry and sunny patches of the coast range, and dominates once you've gone 30 miles inland, as the fault-raised hills hold back the rain and fog. In the sunnier South, the chaparral comes right down to the coast. Casual visitors driving through just call it 'scrub', and don't understand its special character.

The chaparral plants have various adaptations to drought, including tiny leaves, some of which drop during the summer. One of the most common adaptations is the presence of oils in the bark and leaves to seal them against water loss. The aromatic oils in the sagebrush are the reason it's sometimes called 'cowboy cologne.' There's one chaparral shrub that's called 'greasewood' for its abundant oils.

Natural oils burn just like the kind that's pumped out of the ground. Get the chaparral burning and the heat will evaporate the oils out of the plants just ahead of the flames. Supply a little oxygen, and the brush and air above explode. That's the sheet of flame on the video feeds tonight.

The chaparral is evolved to burn and survive. Plants like the manzanita will lose everything above ground, and crown sprout a whole new plant at the next rainy season. Coyote brush is an opportunist, popping up on any burnt ground from small, airborne seeds. Some plants only grow in a burn. In a park near our home, one type of bush mallow was considered to have become extinct, until there was a small burn a few years ago. Now they grow in abundance in the scar, from dormant seeds that were waiting for the inevitable fire. Even outside the true chaparral community, there are 'fire pines' like the Bishop pine whose seeds will only fall and root in a burn.

If the chaparral does not burn, things only get worse. There's not enough moisture for rot, for scavenging insects, to remove the dead wood from the scrub. It just piles up as the bushes grow higher. Let a chaparral stand go for 40 years, 50 years, and it's a bomb waiting to explode.

During the California summer, there's a semi-permanent high pressure area that sits offshore in the Pacific. Any storms get bumped north to our friends in Seattle and Vancouver. We get gentle west to southwest breezes. As the fall comes and the storms gain more power, the high pressure center gets pushed eastward, into the desert areas of eastern Oregon, California and Nevada. The winds in California reverse, and bring hot, totally dry winds out of the interior blowing toward the coast. They blow strongest in the South, with all the heat of the Nevada deserts funneled through the passes in the mountains. That's a Santa Anna wind, and it can be strong enough to knock over 18-wheelers on I-5, or blow up a fire storm.

We Californians have a love/hate relationship with our natural surroundings. We love it enough to want to get out of the urban centers and into nature, so we run bulldozers, roads and irrigation right out there to make a home. Then we resume the love affair, letting the fuel load build up year by year, in preference to controlled burns and ugly fire breaks. Then we sweat out the fire seasons.

Don't suppose I'm speaking from any position of superiority. I own a rather expensive home on about two acres of oak woodland, at the edge of a 'red zone' rated fire risk area. We've cleared out the undergrowth, but the oaks come right to the edge of the house because, you see, I love them and it's why we bought the place. If the fire comes, and I'm not there to run the chain saw and drop the trees, well it's gone. If you're risk averse, it's just the wrong place to live.

Add it all up, and all it takes is a little bad luck for the perfect firestorm. Here's best wishes to our friends in the Southland, because it could be us next. (And by the way, if you want to know why things are happening, and what's next, watch the Weather Channel. Based on today's performance, the talking heads on CNN evidently don't understand how to control a wildfire, or why a cold front moving into central California means the Santa Anna is about to end. They are either idiots, or out-of-state 'talent' imported to look pretty in front of the flames.)
9:26:16 PM    

Here's a piece of local culture that you're not likely to see on CNN or Fox. From Zayed of Healing Iraq, a blog worth following now that Salam's posting rate has dropped through the floor.
9:40:08 AM