This afternoon I had a little time to visit the Harbor to see if there were any great blue herons.  Initially, there was one bird in a tree.  Just as I got my camera ready,  that bird flew away and another landed in the same spot by a nest.  That bird only stayed a minute or two, and flew off in the same direction as the first one.  I waited for a few minutes to see if either would return or if there might be others that would move around in the trees.  After a few minutes, it appeared that there was nobody home, and I decided to move on.   Behind the parking lot, there is a building that is headquarters for a ship-building company.  As I drove past that building, I noticed three birds on the roof.

I quickly turned around and took photos of each of the three.

I turned around to see two sailboats entering the channel.

It's been lovely here this week -- cool and cloudy in the mornings, and temps around 80 in the afternoons.  There's been a light breeze each afternoon -- enough to sail, but not enough to be windy -- and by dusk the clouds have been moving back in from the sea.

Last March I had an e-mail message asking if I would be at home at the end of June.  The messager would be in Southern California for a quick convention -- an alumni reunion -- and wondered how close she would be to my home.  I excitedly responded that I would be at home, and that I live about an hour and a half drive (we measure distance in driving time here, and that's not terribly far!) from Ontario , where her reunion was to be held.   And I waited through a long three months for the day to come.  The person who wrote that message was Xanga blogger ZSA_MD, or Zakiah Ali.

Zakiah was planning to attend a reunion of her Medical School in India, along with about 150 alums from all over the country.  She particularly wanted to meet me as well as Carlos Carrion, who also lives in the area.  The timing of the reunion was very short and very full of activities, but there was time for the three of us to get together on Saturday for a delightful lunch and a couple of hours of wonderful conversation.  We covered a wide range of topics, including the story of her medical school,  some personal background of each of us, some political thoughts (imagine 3 strangers coming together and thinking much the same way about today's politics!), and the mission of the alumni group, which gets together each year to provide donations to the school they all attended -- the Indian government would like to take over the school, but the alumni group sees the value of a private institution and is working to maintain the private independence of the school.  For two short hours, we never stopped talking!  When I sent my few photos to Zakiah, she commented that it was wonderful to see the happy smiles all around!

Saturday turned out to be a delightful visit -- one that I hope can be repeated sometime in the future!

During the past week when I was in the area (without my camera!), I swung by the harbor, really to kill a few minutes.  Driving past the stand of eucalyptus trees where I had seen great blue herons in the past, I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of great blue herons -- they have not been there earlier this spring, and I had thought there would not be anybody home in the nests.  On Friday, with a few minutes to enjoy, I again went to see the birds again -- and there were four or five of them.  I had my camera with me this time, and spent some time taking a few photos, just to document that they are really there.

This pair appeared to be involved perhaps in some courting or feeding behavior.

While I was there, I thought this was a pair.  Looking at the photo, taken with a long lens, the one in the upper nest is a Great Blue Heron, while the other looks more like a night heron.

In the next few weeks, I'll be spending more time with the herons, and will always have the camera with me!  After looking back at prior years, it seems late in the season to be seeing these birds in this particular location, so I'm not sure there will be chicks this time -- we'll see.  But it was exciting to see  more than one bird there a couple of days within a week.

As I grew up in Santa Barbara, I learned to live with brush fires which occurred every summer, usually between August and November.  As the climate has changed, the 'fire season' has grown to cover the entire year.  As if there has not been enough going on in recent days, Santa Barbara is currently experiencing the first bad fire of the season.  It began yesterday at the top of the mountains about 20 miles north of town, and by evening it had burned over 1,000 acres.   The origin was near the Reagan Ranch that served as the Western White House during Reagan's presidency -- also directly up the hill from the Refugio beach where there was a bad oil spill last fall.  There is also a summer camp in the same area.  Normally at this time of year, the 'marine layer' moves in each evening, bringing in fog and clouds overnight.  The jet stream is doing now what it usually does in the fall, and the movement of air is opposite the normal.  As the sun goes down, the winds increase -- last night they experienced 45 mph 'Sundowner' winds in the fire area.  The winds blow down the mountains, and last night they carried fire all the way to the ocean.  The coast highway was closed overnight, and the fire grew to 1,200 acres.  Fortunately, as the fire burned down the mountain, it didn't burn towards Santa Barbara, although the authorities are warning of unhealthy air today.  This pattern will repeat itself tonight, with winds predicted to 30 mph.

This afternoon, a second fire began, several miles closer to town, still at the top of the mountains -- it was extinguished while still very small.  These fires are particularly difficult -- they are beginning near the top of the mountains, where access is limited, and in areas that have not burned for 50-70 years.  They fight them first with helicopters -- they have to fly to the nearest source of water and back, drop the water on the flames, and repeat the process.  While they're doing that, they bring in bulldozers to create a fire road, and eventually larger fixed wing aircraft with larger capacity for water drops.  There are also 2 converted DC-10's that round out the arsenal -- they drop a mixture of water and phosgene, a heavy fire retardant.  The planes can only fly during the day, although they sometimes use the helicopters at night in a particularly bad fire if the winds allow.  They are expecting to need about 1,000 firefighters to work the lines as well.

The firefighters commented this morning that they are fortunate that the West is in a relatively light period of fires -- this evening I learned of two other bad fires -- one in Arizona and another in New Mexico.  It looks to be a bad fire season!

Memorial Day was a nicer day than we've had for a while, meaning that the gray burned off around noon and the afternoon was sunny.  I went to Dana Point Harbor to see what activity I could find -- the following photos are of some of the boating activity in and around the channel.  Rather than commenting, I'll simply post the photos and let you enjoy them.

Tomorrow is June 1.  I have established a PayPal account so I could pay Xanga for another year's membership, and Eugenia has been gracious enough to process my payment very quickly, so I will continue, at least for a while, to post on both sites.   Right now, I'm posting on Xanga and copying to WordPress.  Soon I will reverse that  process to determine which works better and to learn WordPress in case it becomes necessary to post there for some reason.

Throughout this month of May, I have referred to May Gray and June Gloom.  Both are local phenomena in which the Marine Layer, a layer of overcast and mist or fog, migrates into the Los Angeles Basin overnight, burning off sometime during the next day.  This May, the Marine Layer has been particularly thick, and yesterday it burned off only shortly before dusk, only to build again overnight.  Yesterday, I went to my favorite high overlook specifically to photograph May Gray.  There was a little patch of sun shining on the sea some distance away, but the day was quite gray.  When May Gray lasts all month, it can be quite depressing.

Those who follow my posts will perhaps recognize these vistas, but for those who do not, there are tall mountains in the background of the next two shots.

Today, Memorial Day, the gray burned off much earlier, and the  day was considerably warmer, and happier.  We expect to see a period of less cloudiness and more warmth for the next week or so.  June Gloom, if it comes in, is very similar to May Gray, although a bit warmer.

As I do each time I go to Santa Barbara, I wanted to see how Lake Cachuma has weathered the last few months of the drought.  It had been 4 months since I'd been there before, and I was aware that there had been a release of water for the downstream users with senior water rights that was to have lowered the level by 7 feet.  Additionally, there had been a very little rain, and the purchase of some State water to increase the level.  The day we were there,  it was quite clear that the lake level has dropped somewhat since the last time.  The following are, as usual, vistas from two viewing spots just at the dam.  There is an informal viewing area where you can pull over by the side of the road and walk about 25 feet to a flat open spot -- the first few shots were taken from there.

A short way down the road, there is a parking lot, with a picnic table and a sign explaining the dam (which I have posted many times before), and a view straight across the dam.

Looking across and to the right (upstream) one sees these views.  The first set of shots in my lake level series, a couple of years ago, included a shot in this direction, with green spring grasses.  The water level was about at the first line below the high water line.

The next shot looks back towards the County Park.  The first time we saw this, the water level was at the top of the  grassy knoll in front of the Park buildings on the right hand side of the shot.

The sandbar just at the level of the County Park now goes almost all the way across the lake!

Next, we see the back face of the dam.  When the lake is full, the water level is near the top of this riprap (the rocky area).

At this point, the surface has been exposed for long enough that tall native weeds have begun to carpet the back of the dam.

Next, a couple of miscellaneous shots through the trees.

As we left the area, I spotted another vista point, stopped and shot two more shots looking back at the sandbar.

Those of you who have followed my series over the last couple of years will recognize some of the following, although the reporting has changed a bit.  Lake Cachuma is the primary storage for Santa Barbara's city water supply, as well as for several smaller communities north and south of Santa Barbara.  When full, the lake holds 188,030 acre feet of water (325,850 gallons in an acre foot).  On May 14, the lake held 28,337 acre feet.  It was a relatively cool day, and not terribly dry, but the evaporation was 26.7 acre feet, which was offset by sufficient in-flow to maintain the water level with no change.  The last time the dam spilled was in 2011.  What is left now is most of the water available to Santa Barbara until their new desal plant comes on line in the fall -- it will supplement the available water, but not sufficiently to provide plenty!

While in Santa Barbara, I had lunch with my sister, who last summer returned to Santa Barbara after 45 years living in Europe.  She is now living in a second story condo with a lovely triangular back yard along a creek (they're usually dry in California), and with a huge Moreton Bay Fig tree by the creek.  She spends a lot of time on the balcony, reading, eating, and enjoying the back yard.

I spent part of the last two weeks in Santa Barbara.  It was a good trip, and we accomplished lots -- a shopping trip to Ventura, a shopping trip to Thousand Oaks, combined with a visit to a retirement home in Thousand Oaks, a visit to Lake Cachuma, a visit with my sister, and a visit to my two little great nephews.  On the Lake Cachuma trip, we had lunch at a favorite place in Santa Ynez.  This is the weather vane at the hotel connected with that restaurant.

In the next few days, I will post photos of the lake, and of my sister's yard.  Other than that, we were too busy to stop and take pictures!  The good news is that nobody died, and my house didn't fall down!

(This is the edge of a beam in my upstairs office -- when I first saw it, I was afraid that the house would fall -- I'm currently waiting for the Homeowners Association to decide that the beam is not decorative but structural, and that it is their responsibility to repair it.)

A few days ago at Dana Point  several people were looking at the top of a small group of eucalyptus trees.  I followed their gaze, and heard the distinctive clack-clack of a nest of herons.  Looking more closely, I spotted some nests I'd not seen before, along with the tell-tale large white spot on the ground below.  I've not yet seen birds in the nests, but at the top of this tree, beautiful in itself,

there are 4 or 5 nests.

I will continue to visit the nests to see if there are birds there -- I'm hoping that my previous visits may just have been too early in the season.   It's an odd season this year -- in the last couple of weeks, we've had several days of really strong winds, and are now on the edge of some rain storms going through the area.  Hopefully this unusual weather will not discourage the herons, and they will continue to be in their nests for several weeks.

Spring flowers are beginning to show up nicely over the last week or two.  Last week the Jacaranda trees were in bloom -- the streets are lined with purple flowers and slippery sidewalks!

As that happens, though, the lovely green grasses have already turned brown (this was a VERY hazy day -- it was difficult to see much through the haze!)!

This morning we had a rain shower, and it looks as if there may be another at any time.  I took advantage of a patch of dry, and took these shots from my front door.  First, looking straight down my front path:

And then the flowers on those hydrangea bushes.

Some of you have noticed that I haven't been posting as much recently as I used to.  I came to a point, when there were no herons to visit, that it became somewhat boring to go back to the same places with the camera to take the same photos.  With the exception of trips to Santa Barbara, I found that I also didn't want to take longer day trips.  I sometimes took the camera to the beach, but didn't find what I expected (anything new), and didn't take any photos.  My muse is returning now, and last week I decided to make the drive half way to San Diego to visit the Flower Fields.  It was a trip with mixed results -- it did get me out of the house and finding new things, but the new things were certainly not what I expected.  I looked forward to lunch at an upscale restaurant within an outlet mall by the Flower Fields -- only to find that it had closed a year and a half ago, and the space is now occupied by an Under Armour store!  I ended up viewing the Flower Fields from a vantage point at the top of the hill and eating lunch after I returned home!

It was a lovely day, sunny and warm but not hot, and wispy clouds drifting ashore from a small storm that never actually came ashore.

The Flower Fields is comprised of 50 acres of land on which ranunculus are grown commercially.  They are grown for flowers, for seed, and for the corms that are generally used in garden planting.  During the spring, The Flower Fields are open to the public (for a $15 fee) to walk around, to photograph, and  to purchase items from Armstrong Nursery, a Southern California chain.   On the lower, freeway side, there are restaurants, a row of auto dealerships, and an outlet mall.  Above the flowers, there is a row of office buildings, condos, and a resort hotel.  Unless you are actually inside the Flower Fields, it's actually a little difficult to see that they are there.  Knowing that, I went to a good vantage point above the fields to take some photos, again with mixed results.

The first photo was taken from the parking lot of the outlet mall, showing the one full field of flowers that are in bloom.  It is getting toward the end of the season -- the attraction closes on May 8, but usually there are several fields that are at least this full of flowers and color.

There are about a dozen fields, planted in sequence, with stripes of color -- in a good year, it's really spectacular, and I have posted photos in previous good years.  This year, though, I expect because of the lack of rain that we've had this year, and because of statewide water restrictions, the fields were more sparsely planted, and some appeared not to have been planted at all.  The close part of this one may have been planted and the flowers already picked by the workers to be processed for sale.  The store at the bottom was also not as full as usual of flowers for sale.  As an aside, the tower on the left side of this photo is a power plant.  Carlsbad has just recently activated a new desalination plant connected with the power plant which will supply approximately a quarter of the water for San Diego.  It is a huge plant, but nicely camouflaged!

During the season there are several wagons like this taking people out to the fields to see the flowers.  Schools and Retirement Homes from as far as San Diego (another 40 miles or so) take field trips to see the flowers,  This time I only saw one wagon out in the fields.

Looking southward, there was one more field full of color -- the flowers are being picked and placed in the trucks alongside the fields.The closer fields have been picked -- after May 8, the workers will go through one more time and pick the rest of the flowers and any seeds that remain.

There are a few workers in the field of white flowers -- they pick the flowers and take them to the edge of the field.  The nearby buildings at the bottom are those of the Nursery and other displays within the  compound.  And I always love seeing the row of palm trees lining the ocean along the city of Carlsbad.

Since the beginning of March, my muse left me.  I have taken rides with the camera, and not taken any pictures.  I have taken rides with the camera and I've taken photos that did not satisfy me.  A part of this has been the weather -- there have been numbers of days when we had dirty, hazy skies, and some rainy days.  I show here a few shots taken during that period of time.

Several times I drove to Dana Point Harbor, where the great blue herons were such friends over the past few years.  This is one shot of the trees where that colony lived above the parking lot.  There are one or two nests left -- even less now, after a couple of days of nasty winds.  I haven't seen herons in these trees for several months.

A couple of weeks ago, the air was clearing, and there was a busy day around the mouth of the harbor.  I have cropped these closely because the background is very hazy, and detracts from the photos other than providing depth to the shots.

There were several races in progress that afternoon.  Inside the channel, the sand has nearly blocked passage -- the dredge is removing some of that sand.

In the foreground, an interesting combination of clifftop habitat (including cactus) and ocean.

And one more shot of the busy harbor

As I drove away, these two groups of flowers caught my eye -- I have no idea what they are, but they provide a contrast with the grey background.

As spring takes its time to move in, we have already had a heat spell, with several days of 90 degree temperatures.  It's cooler today, but the clouds we were supposed to have dissipated before they got to us.  It's breezy, but not truly windy today, and it looks as if we may even skip spring and move right to summer.

At 4 o'clock this morning, I awoke from a dream, and this poem sprung to mind.  I knew that if I didn't write it down I'd lose it, so I got up and put it on paper.  I submit it here as my one entry for poetry month:

Maelstrom

On Monday, we had an El Nino storm -- thunder and lightning are very rare, as are heavy rain, snow, and hail.  All morning, we had a mix of these in Southern California.  On Tuesday, I went out to see what nature had left us -- it was a beautiful, clear day, with snow on the mountains,

and fairly strong winds. The hillsides were greening up after a couple of days of rain.

The coastline was being washed by heavy surf, and it was a lovely day for a sail.

At Dana Point, there was a 'tall ship' sailing back into the harbor.  I watched it take down its sails, and motor back into the channel.

Suddenly a group of paddlers appeared, headed out of the harbor over an incoming wave.

Note the waves breaking against the breakwater -- they weren't coming over, but it was fun to see they splashing!

Today, Wednesday, is not quite as nice -- it's cooler, and there's a wispy layer of clouds beginning to come in for the next storm, which is expected to be here on Friday.

Well, the kid finally arrived!  By the end of February, a completely dry month in the Southland, we are now seeing what some call the March Miracle.  The jet stream has flattened out, and there is no longer a High directing our winter weather to the north.  Over the weekend, we had the first band of rain in the last 6 weeks or so -- it left a little water on our landscape.  And this morning I awoke to a strong thunderstorm, lasting nearly an hour, and bringing much more rain (and even some hail).  Today's plans, which involved my driving to meet a friend who was planning to drive from San Diego, have been cancelled, as there is expected to be more rain and stormy weather!  I am looking forward to a true "rainy day" -- and perhaps several more in the next couple of weeks.  It looks as if March rains will make up for a dry February.

On Sunday, I visited the herons again.  There were two or three in their nests, and one standing on a branch.

Monday was a half-holiday -- I again visited the harbor to see what the birds were doing.  There was so much fog that it was difficult to see the treetops where there nests are!  In fact, the fog was so thick that visibility was virtually zero -- you couldn't see across the channel.  There is a sailboat in each of these channel shots!

As little as a half mile away, the sky was quite blue, and the temperature approached 90 degrees!  For a breather from the fog, I drove a couple of miles inland, and found these young orange trees.

We have had four or five days of heat wave.  Tomorrow it is supposed to cool off a bit, and there might be a little rain on Thursday; then it will warm up again to record-breaking temperatures.

On Tuesday I went again to Dana Point to reassure myself that the herons are back, and that it wasn't just a lone bird that I had seen earlier, perhaps just stopping for a rest.

Shortly after I arrived, the upper of these two flew off!  I think they are back for the season!

The nests are up so high that it's difficult sometimes to see anything but the underneath side of the bird.  They sometimes look like open umbrellas!

The breast feathers are longer than I remember -- and quite distinctive!

There are just a few birds in the colony yet -- but it seems to be the beginning of the season, and perhaps there will be more as we move through February.

It's been so lovely here that, on Super Bowl Sunday, I took a short drive to Dana Point to see what the weather has brought.  I found that the hills are alive with the green that follows even a small rain.  Wherever there is space, the grass seeds have been collecting, and they all sprouted during January's rain.

Having not seen them last year, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find a great blue heron at Dana Point Harbor.

There are only a few nests remaining, but it was worth taking the time to look at the others as well.

These were three solitary birds, sitting quietly in their nests.  At this point, I don't know whether there will be others during the spring or not -- there was only one yesterday.

Along the inside of Dana Point Harbor there are very tall cliffs, with houses on top.  Rainy weather often serves to erode the tops of cliffs, and if houses are built too close to the edge they may be subject to damage from this erosion.  It looks as if this is beginning to happen along this clifftop as well as those in the San Francisco area.

The storms also tend to move sand rather rapidly.  The channel into the harbor is gaining quite a sandbar (to be sure, the tide was pretty low when I took these shots).

And the barge has been moved into place to bring in a dredge and remove at least some of this sand.

We expect to have another week of beautiful summer weather -- and no rain until at least the end of February!

Way back in October, murisopsis posted about an orb she had finally received from the kiln.  It was originally envisioned as a cocolith from the Alboran Sea, but there were difficulties in adding spines in the centers.  The result was absolutely beautiful, but not a cocolith.  I went offline and negotiated a price for this orb, but had to wait because it was scheduled to be shown in a Faculty/Staff art show.  This week, there was a key in my mailbox -- a key to the package locker.  Lo and behold, the package inside contained the orb.  I found a wooden stand from a magnifying glass that just fits, to keep it from rolling off its perch.  It's even better looking on my teak bookcase than it was in the photos shown by murisopsis!

I love having a piece of Val's work -- and this is one of the prettiest I remember seeing!

On the day right after it rains, the sky is often beautifully blue and clear.  Last week I visitsd Crescent Bay, on the northern coast of Laguna Beach.  There had been big waves during the storms, and I wanted to see if the waves were breaking over the rocks.  These shots mostly are either of the rocks right off shore or looking southward past the town of Laguna Beach.

It has been cloudy for the last two days as the next two storms have passed by to the north.  There were big wave warnings today, and they will last through tomorrow -- I'll try to get some views of them tomorrow!

During the first week of January, we had three days in a row of steady rains.  I didn't get out with the camera during those days, but I did get one shot at the end of the rain, just to prove it had been raining!

One morning when I awoke, the view outside was quite rainy -- I grabbed the camera and took the next couple of shots from my bed!

And the patio also showed evidence of rain.

When there are winter storms, they often leave snow at the top of the mountains.  The prediction of rain is often followed by a statement something like "snow above 5,000 feet," and usually that means there will flurries about 1,000 feet lower than predicted.  Last week, when the sun came out, there was a lovely snow cap on the mountains of the San Gabriel range.

There have been storms almost every other day since then -- dry winter storms, which drop their rain in Northern and Central California but are dry in Southern California coastal areas.

The most recent time in 2015 that I had visited Lake Cachuma was in mid-October.  At that time, the lake level was about 19% of capacity, and the lake was looking pretty dismal.  Within the next few days after that visit, the lake was lowered by approximately 7 feet.  This release was to meet the requirements of senior rights holders downstream (a couple of small cities and some agricultural land) and to ensure that there was enough water flowing to the ocean to meet requirements of the endangered steelhead trout.  This time when we were there, the lake level was approximately 10% of capacity!  This was enough difference to be very noticeable -- there are new sandbars, and some of the inlets in the lake are now simply streams flowing into the lake.  It has rained since, and the lake level is now about 2-1/2 inches higher that it was at the beginning of the month.

Looking upstream from the first stopping point towards the County Park, there are more sandbars.

And some go much farther across the lake.

The peninsula where the County Park lies is now more like a mesa -- the flat top covered with trees, and a huge drop-off to the lake.

Moving closer to the top of the dam, we saw some of the inlets that have now become outlets of small streams into the lake.

Here are a few more shots of the dam itself, looking across to the other side.

Then suddenly we saw a worker walking up the back of the dam.

And one more shot looking back at the lake.

As we often do, we then stopped at the Alisal River Golf Course for lunch -- although the hills are still brown, the greens have received a little water, probably from that October release, and are looking a little greener.

A word about El Nino:  Last week we had three or four storms roll through Southern California -- these were designated as the first El Nino storms for the season.  El Nino is very fickle -- the storms that were predicted for the weekend weakened, and dropped virtually no rain on Southern California, though there was new snow farther north.  There are more storms predicted for the coming week, but there is a caveat that they may end up going farther north.  Water that drops into the lake stays there to be used, but the ground around the lake is so dry that there is no runoff -- it will take several more good storms before we really see the benefits of El Nino, and there is still no guarantee that we will see those storms!  Currently, we are about an inch below the average rainfall for this time of year.  The rain has been VERY welcome, but we are far from being out of the woods as far as breaking the drought is concerned!

Throughout Southern California there are many small lakes used as reservoirs for municipal water districts.  Behind Ventura, and close to Ojai, is Lake Casitas, created by an earthen dam on Coyote Creek.  This lake supplies water to parts of Ventura, a number of small communities, and Ojai, and secondarily acts as a flood control dam.  The lake level is currently at approximately 42%.  On the way to view the fire damage shown in my last post, we had these brief views of Lake Casitas.

Even on the small island in the center of the lake you can see that the high water line is several feet higher than the current lake level.

Lake Cachuma photos coming in the next post.

On the morning after Christmas, after a very windy night, we awoke to the news that there was a brushfire that had closed the one major freeway between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.  North of Ventura, there is a stretch of road that runs along the coastline -- the old road still exists, and runs right along the shore cliffs; the newer road was built on stilts above the old, or slightly inland, and there is a railroad line that weaves between the two roads.  In two or three spots, there are patches of land large enough for small enclaves to have sprung up, and along the old road there are many parking spots used by RV campers.  Solimar Beach and Faria Beach are two of these enclaves, with about 10-15 miles between them.  That stretch of the freeway had been closed since before midnight on Christmas, and was to remain closed until sometime after noon the next day.  There is no good detour -- oh, yes, you can go inland in Ventura, then over 2-lane country roads through Ojai and inland Carpinteria, but that's hardly enough for a busy 6-lane freeway!

Several days later, on a beautiful day, we drove from Santa Barbara to Ojai on what would have been the detour route -- and then down to Ventura and turned north on the freeway.  Taking the first offramp north of Ventura, we dropped to the old road -- around the first corner we began to see evidence that there had been a fire.  The fire began at the top of the hill, spsreading into a "V" as it raced down the hill, and burned much of the way between the two beaches.

The terrain is very steep, the hills are rocky, and sparsely covered with grasses and low bushes.  There had not been a fire in the area for many years, and it was very dry after our years of drought.  Around the next corner, this is what we saw!  We pulled into a wide spot parking space to shoot some photos.

Looking across the old road to the two levels of the newer road (southbound just behind the railing, and northbound above that)

Part of the new road on stilts -- here you can see how the fire burned right down to the sea, across both levels of the freeway and the old road and the train tracks!

Looking up at the southbound lanes of the freeway

and one final shot across the burned hills and up to unburned hills.

The road opened the afternoon after the fire began, but traffic, always heavy, was snarled through that day and the next.

Yesterday and the day before (1/5 and 1/6), we had the first heavy El Nino rains of the season -- heavy winds accompanied by about 2.5 inches of rain.  Because there is now no grass or brush to hold the hills in place, there was serious flooding in this area.  This had been somewhat anticipated, and there had been some serious clearing of culverts, etc., but the Southbound lanes were closed again for much of yesterday (yes, the fire came down and crossed the northbound lanes first -- but apparently the culverts took care of the runoff until it got to the southbound lanes).

The storm has produced flooding throughout Southern California, where culverts and/or drains were not sufficiently cleared, and in areas below previous fires -- it takes several years for the land heals after a fire.  Lake Cachuma had about 2.5 inches of rain over the last couple of days -- but there has been no runoff into the lake -- the lake level is about 2.5 inches higher than it was before the rains began!