Fire and Rain

That's not fog, folks. That's smoke blowing into Northeast Florida from the fires in Southeast Georgia.

Da Kid, who's on duty in a county adjacent to the wildfires, said this morning that the largest one -- the one started when a tree was blown over into a live power line -- has grown to one mile wide and eleven miles long.

With as dry as it is here again, people are spooky and with good reason.

With so much smoke in the air, callers flooded 911 to the extent that the first thing I heard when I turned the radio on this morning was a plea issued by Jacksonville Fire Rescue for people to STOP calling them. They KNOW about the smoke and it's not coming from any fires in this area.

Still -- and already knowing this when I went outside for the first time this morning -- I was very tempted to call 911, anyway, just to have them make sure. The smoke was that thick and the smell of burning wood, that strong. Then it got worse.

The winds shifted direction around 3 this afternoon sending the smoke elsewhere. The weatherjerks are saying we may get more rain tomorrow afternoon. I sure hope so, not that the storm we got over the weekend gave us much more than an inch and a half. But, anything helps.