[Joey]

Last Monday morning I posted this fire map on social media. By early evening the map had been opened so many times I hit Google's pay wall and all my maps stopped working. Each time any of my Google maps is opened, the Google map API (Application Program Interface) is downloaded from Google's servers to the user's browser. Google knows the IP address of my server. Google allows an IP address (i.e. my server) to cause its map API to be downloaded a total of 25,000 times per day for free. After that all maps from that IP address stop working until the next day unless you buy more API downloads for the rest of the current day. On Tuesday I hit the pay wall earlier in the day. Someone suggested setting up a GoFundMe. I looked at that but they want 9+% overhead which seemed steep. Instead, on Wednesday I posted on a CA forum where they know me and like my fire map. I explained the probblem and asked for donations via the Gmap4 donate page (PayPal). In literally minutes $240 had been donated and I told that was plenty, please stop. So I gave Google my credit card and set up automatic billing. On Thursday I get an email out of the blue from Google. It said they knew about my fire map and that it had hit their pay wall. Then the email said for the duration of the fire emergency they were raising my allocation of free map API downloads from 25,000 to 250,000! Yea Google. For more info about the map you can click "Map Tips" in the upper left corner. View larger size in new window

[Bernardo]

Nice work!

[mike]

Cool! Is there a way to reduce the opacity of the yellow fire grid to be able to see through it? Without turning it off

[zephyr]

[treeswarper]

If weather here permits, I have been going down for a few years to do a few days of volunteer work at a state park near Calistoga each November. I'm waiting to see if they will want folks this year. The place where we worked last year burned, along with some old buildings. The area needed a burn to go through, but not a really hot one. It was overgrown with brush and understory. We shall see. Then there is a preserve closer to Napa that I got a tour of. They'd been slowly doing some thinning and brush removal and the fire went through there. The buildings there have survived, we'll maybe see how scorched the redwoods are. I don't know much about redwoods so it will be interesting. It's been a pretty scary and tragic disaster. I've heard that powerlines are the culprits. Maybe it is time to put them underground.

[Joey]

[Joey]

If you change the basemap to "Today MODIS aerial" you can see the smoke plumes.

[Chico]

[grannyhiker]

My daughter-the-veterinarian and her husband-the-ER-physician live a couple miles SW of Sonoma. She cancelled a trip to Europe, boarded out their dog, and they both are doing volunteer work. I've been in touch daily and have been checking the local media. There's still a lot of fire out there, but the big ones are now at least 50% contained. The NWS seems pretty confident that they'll get a bit of rain later this week. Not enough to put the fire out, but at least a big help for the firefighters. I'm reading that in a number of state parks, only the underbrush burned, which is ideally what should happen. Redwoods are extremely fire-resistant. In the meantime, at least 5,000 homes are gone in an area that already had a significant housing shortage, the authorities keep finding more bodies, and a firefighter was killed (truck rollover) this morning. At least what happened in Santa Rosa proves that nobody should consider that they are safe from wildfire because they live in a densely built-up urban area!

[Chico]

[Joey]

I saw that video. Yikes. Makes me wonder could that happen here. After all, some summers central puget sound has red flag warnings.

[grannyhiker]

If the strong east winds from the Gorge had kept up another day, the Eagle Creek fire that started Labor Day weekend could have reached my home in Troutdale. The boundary of the Level 1 evacuation zone was just a few blocks east. I was away from home (escaping the smoke) at the time, and when I found out about the new evacuation zone and called my neighbors, they told me the winds had died down that afternoon. What a relief! Cliff Mass' blog today has a detailed account of how those winds happened and why they were unusually strong.

[moonspots]

[grannyhiker]

Article on efffects of fire on Sonoma County regional parks Of course, the fires may be about 2/3 to 3/4 contained, but there's still active fire in many areas.

[Washakie]

My father was born in Yountville and we used to live just north of town. Beautiful country. So sad.