- The smoke from a wildfire between between 29N and the Blue Ridge Mountains. By Jocelyn Dale / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
There are brush fires all over the area, as CBS-19 and NBC-29 report, or as you might have noticed if you’ve breathed today. The high wind means that small fires quickly become big fires. Lots of people are providing reports of small fires via Facebook, and Albemarle’s Fire Incident Display System is thick with responses to brush fires. Over at The Hook, Hawes Spencer has a dramatic photo of a wall of flames advancing through an Ivy neighborhood, said to be the result of some jackass deciding that the day with a 20 mph average wind speed would be the day to burn some brush. There are also good-sized fires in Esmont, 53, north of Crozet, and a thousand-acre fire in Louisa.
Here in northwest Albemarle, the air has been filled with smoke all day, the result of a fire between 20N and 29N. My house is perched on the side of the Southwest Mountains, and as the sun set, the low rays illuminated the huge cloud of smoke that is hovering over the area.
The strongest winds should peter out overnight, although it’ll still be decently breezy tomorrow, so it could be a bit until these fires are out and new ones stop popping up.
Waldo, that photo was taken looking toward the northwest, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains in SNP. The intersection is Rio Mills Road & Earlysville Road.
Thanks for the correction, Jocelyn! What had read:
Now reads:
Coming back from refereeing soccer tournament Route 64 was closed at marker 205.
Interstate traffic from both ways dumped onto sideroads.
NOT pretty.
William Van Doren painted the smoke as seen from Stony Point.
Saw the smoke from the Ragged Mt Fire when I was at 250 near the Ivy Exit, and then again on 29 south near 64. Few minutes later, saw smoke from an entirely different fire, going down 20 south near the Kappa something HQ just south of Monticello High.
It fills me with fond memories of the years I lived in Southern California.
Its the liberals fault. ;-)
Hey, you expected me to go a whole thread without?
Danpri, do you mean mile marker 105?
No, this was coming back from east of Richmond. I was reffing a soccer tourney and the site coordinator found out that there was a fire at mile marker 205, just east of the 295 bypass.
That said, I managed to notice the line of tail lights west of Exit 220 and jumped onto Route 60 and made it unitl the traffic was being diverted at route 64, Exit 211, where everything came to a standstill until 295 north of 64.
While it sucked to be me, it was way worse for the people at a dead stop on 64 for those additional 9 miles, before the turnoff…
My aching old body, sore and stiff from 4 games, was in rough shape after sitting in a car for 4 hours.
So, on Sunday, the day after all of these fires were reported all over the television, radio and newspapers, my neighbors decided to burn a big pile of brush in the middle of the day. Knuckleheads. The fire department set them straight.