A little excitement in South San Jose

Over a thousand wildfires are burning across California. Two weeks ago the air in the Bay Area was heavy with soot and the sun turned some strange color for several days. It smelled like a campfire outside and our vehicles had a thin film of wood ash. All this was from the wildfires that are over 100 miles north of us. The wind happened to be blowing in our direction all week.

A few weeks before that, there were some fires a bit closer. These were still over 15 miles away, but we could see the smoke rising in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

But on July 5, we had a wildfire just a few hundred yards from our house! Granted, it only was a half-acre brush fire that was quickly brought under control. But it was still quite the site with a fire helicopter scooping water out of our lake and dumping it on the flames. I got some great video! Here are some pics I took:

The helicopter was a lot lower than it looks in the photos. When it first came through our windows rattled much like they did in the earthquake we had last year.

We could see some smoke but it is not evident in the photos. Oh well, at least we didn't have to evacuate.