Smoldering
Speed It's the speed that really shocks you, when you think about it. We think of fire as hot. We may love the smell of a cozy fire on a cool night. But our relationship with fire tends to involve measures to keep fire stationary. It's called a fire place , after all, not a fire-go-round. But when Seattle turned from a gloriously sunny Labor Day to a smoke-choked dusk in a matter of minutes, it was the speed everyone was talking about. Winds in excess of 50 MPH whipped in from the east, bringing with them all the smoke from Eastern WA wildfires and, as always when the east winds come down the Cascades, heat (we are farther north than Montreal here, but it will be 90 degrees the next two days.) Since July 1, Seattle has managed to record a big 0.17" of rainfall. While summer is hardly the rainy season in the Pacific Northwest, that total is still less than a tenth of average. And this is the "wet" side of the mountains. This time of year, the state, like its West