I mentioned on my May 9th More Wildfires post about the Horseshoe 2 wildfire that began on May 8th. Mostly our wind has been from the west, so we have not experienced much of the smoke from that fire. Yesterday I took these pictures looking off to the east.
You can see the Chiricahua Mountains in the center of the picture, far in the distance. It doesn’t show up so well in the picture, but you can actually see a smoke plume rising from those mountains. Notice the blue sky?
When I zoom in as far as my camera will allow, the blue sky is gone and all you have is a smoky haze. Trying to see the area where the smoke is actually coming from is sort of like looking at the Pleiades, you can see it better if you look at it with your peripheral vision.
The mountain range in the foreground is the Mule Mountains, with the town of Bisbee and the Mexico border on the southern end. The Horseshoe 2 wildfire is approximately 80 miles northeast of Sierra Vista. As of this morning, the news report said that it had consumed 32,000 acres and was 25% contained.
Here is a time-lapse video of the Horseshoe 2 fire and some more information from the JeffBeamish.com blog, a local (Tucson) blog pertaining to weather in Arizona.
scary stuff we’ve had some this year in England as it has been so dry.