The Fire Down Below

People think you can’t see wind. This is what a Santa Ana wind looks like.

In the picture above, it’s blowing, hard, from right to left (east to west).

Humidity is in single digits. Temperature is like an August day.

Over the mountains, the air is crystal clear.

From Long Beach, even further west, the smoke looks dramatic. Curling white and black ashes float down from the sky like snowflakes. The light on the street is yellow; stripes of blue show through between long brushstrokes of brown sky. The sun descends blood red, marking what Cormac McCarthy calls an evening redness in the west.

The pictures above are from the area between Seal Beach and Sunset Beach (taken from Pacific Coast Highway).