Pulaski tool time in Jamieland

As of late Sunday night, October 16.

I was watching the baseball game from San Diego Saturday night, and toward the end it was raining pretty hard. The high temperatures there were 71 on Saturday and 73 on Sunday.

Here in Portland it was 87 on Saturday and 86 on Sunday, with east winds pretty steady at 10 miles an hour or more, and dry as a bone.

The crazy weather, which has put me into a state of vague dread for a couple of weeks, has now got many residents of Clark and Skamania Counties in Washington scrambling for safety. There's a fire going up by Larch Mountain, near Washougal and Camas, that as of Sunday night had 2,900 homes under mandatory evacuation and tens of thousands more residents being told to be ready to run. They're calling it the Nakia Creek fire. It was last reported at 2,000 acres or so, and they don't really know how much containment there is because the smoke is so bad.

Speaking of smoke, we've been breathing some moderately bad stuff here in town for a week or so, although we've choked on much worse over the years. So far the dots on the map have been yellow, rather than green, orange, or red.

It's supposed to rain on and off starting Friday afternon or evening. Believe it when you see it. In the meantime, Covid masks can double as wildfire smoke masks. I think they will be a permanent fixture, even if the coronavirus ever abates.