Ominous Fire Season Signs

At this writing, a fire is raging, uncontained, in the Ocala National Forest about forty miles southeast of Gainesville. There are other fires beginning to break out in various spots in north and central Florida, portending a crisis situation in this extremely dry time of the year. We've received very little rain over the past few weeks. And if we don't begin to get some on a regular basis and in large quantities, I'm afraid that we in Florida will suffer a similar fate to that which we underwent in the disastrous 1998 "fire season".

You don't have to be directly threatened by a wildfire in order to suffer its effects. A fire can be hundreds of miles away. But if the wind is blowing its smoke in your direction, your air will become full of it (and even ashes), making it more difficult to breathe (and impossible for some).
Maybe I'm being unduly pessimistic. But you know you're in a bad situation when it does rain and, while discussing the weather with others, someone almost always chimes in with "yes, but we need the rain"!

Sometimes, during these fires, the smoke gets so bad that I get the urge to go dump a ring into a volcano (with a hobbit carrying me there and an eagle flying me back). And then I would wake up breathing fresh air, with a kindly old wizard grinning at me. Yes, it can get that bad. Mordor in Florida!