The Dark Queen's blog: "News"

Ash and smoke still in the air...at least as of yesterday the santa ana condition is gone and some humidity is back in the air. The off shore breeze we all love so much is now bringing the smoke and ash back to shore, which is a bit ironic. My friend, Ellen and the rest of the street were able to go back to their homes as of Friday... after being evacuated since Monday! At least my good friends have a home to go back to! Fires all around are barely 50% contained and they've been burning since Sunday/Monday... having delays in air rescue as well as hurricane force winds have caused complete devastation... you'd swear a bomb went off. Houses and cars didn't just burn they incinerated/melted. On the other hand, know about more friends that their families have lost their homes and some acquaintances of mine did lose theirs. Just 5 miles from Ellen's home is where I grew up and the fire was confirmed just yards away from my home I grew up in - over 30 years in that home - and another childhood friend's home where she and her siblings still live - the chance is very strong that both my old home and hers are now gone.. but I won't know for a day or two. Don't know why I am still emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted, but I am.... hate being empathic at times. The devistation of my whole world growing up is not easy.

The whole community, along with several others.. in fact, over 250,000 San Diegans have been mandatorily evacuated from their homes. Even Qualcomm Stadium (home of the Chargers) is now a huge evacuation center. Helped water, and pack up my friends, make phone calls to neighbors and evacuated to my friends Ellen and Bill, to his daughter's house along the coast in Leucadia. I talked to my roommate while we were driving to the coast and there are fires north of San Diego, just south of Anaheim/Disneyland in Irvine - so the 5 freeway is jammed up and there is no way for me to get back home.. I'm only an hour's drive from home and can't get there!! Fortunately, Anaheim is safe, but the ash rain and winds are taking its toll up there. I was at least able to get online to give me something to do, but may have to spend the night at my childhood friend's office in Solana Beach if I cannot drive home tonight...Not going to horn in on my friend's family, so will try and do something until I can get home. We are all dragging and feel yucky, and so far, people we know have evacuated, but no one we know have lost their homes (yet)

Here I am in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County with my friend, Ellen, that I've known since 6 years old... the fires got worse during the night, the winds picked up much worse and quicker than they anticipated, and now whole communities are evacuating all around us. We have been on phones for 2 hours (it's now 6am) calling friends and family to see what we can do. Ellen and her husband Bill are packed up with important things to take, and Im here to help with them and neighbors...this fire might be worse than the one 4 years aggo, right to the week that burned so much of Los Angeles down to San Diego. We can hardly breathe even inside with the smoke being blown this way. Winds have been gusting up to 100 mph in areas and at times pushing flames across highways and such. Not sure how Im getting back up to Anaheim an hour north of here later on today. But I'm here with friends and helping, that's the important thing to me.

By Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 1:39 PM PDT, October 21, 2007 The fires burning across Southern California today are being fueled by unusual hurricane-force Santa Ana winds that topped 100 mph, and forecasters say the winds and heat will worsen in the coming days. At Whitaker Peak, elevation 4,100 feet, gusts were clocked at 108 mph. The measurement on the isolated, tumultuous peak spoke to the strength of the winds hammering Southern California. "The strongest winds have not occurred yet. They're going to peak [on Monday]," said Ken Clark, a Rancho Cucamonga-based expert senior meteorologist for Accuweather.com. "This is not just any strong event. This is one of the strongest events you get during any Santa Ana season." In the Newhall Pass and in Port Hueneme, winds gusted up to 78 mph Sunday, qualifying as hurricane force gusts. Generally, gusts were measured between 30 mph to 60 mph, including in Malibu and the major wildfire areas. Early last week, weather experts were already bracing for a buffed-up Santa Ana event. A strong high pressure system was brewing above the Great Basin area over Utah, paving the way for Santa Anas to come barreling down to the lower elevations of Southern California, said Kenneth Reeves, director of forecasting for Accuweather.com, a private forecasting firm. "You could see the difference just in the last three to four hours," Reeves said Sunday morning. "The relative humidity went from 60 to 70 percent around dawn to single digits: five, seven, eight percent. It's a classic example of drier air combined with wind to really cause some problems." Reeves said while top wind speeds were measured in relatively isolated areas, like the top of mountains, they were "disconcerting" because those same gusts funneled to lower elevations--albeit at somewhat reduced speeds. "If you go to any mountain range, like the Rockies, even as far as the top of volcanoes in Hawaii, the difference in winds is noticeable, but they aren't racing at 100 miles per hour," Reeves said. "When you see reporters covering a hurricane, it looks like they're being pushed around pretty hard. More often than not ... the winds are about 40 miles per hour. And you can see what that's doing to them." In Fremont Canyon in the Santa Ana mountains, southeast of Yorba Linda, gusts reached 86 mph. "You get light Santa Anas to extremely strong Santa Anas. This is going to be at the top end," said Ken Clark, a Rancho Cucamonga-based senior meteorologist for Accuweather.com. "Everything is coming together for an exceptional wind event. And this is going to drive humidity to exceptionally low levels." Making things worse, the temperatures in Southern California are expected to get warmer in the next few days. Temperatures in downtown Los Angeles are expected to reach into the 90s on Tuesday, possibly hitting the record for that day: 98. "It's a combination of everything you can imagine getting together to make things real bad," Clark said. December and January are actually busier months for Santa Ana events. And forecasters are warning that signs are pointing to a developing, strong La Nina in the Pacific Ocean. That climate pattern is associated with drier than normal winters in Southern California. That's bad news for a region that has just experienced it's driest season in more than a century. "We're not only going into a La Nina. We're in La Nina, and it's an increasing La Nina," Clark said. "It's intensifying. And that doesn't bode well. When you talk about one year of drought, Southern California can handle that. But two in a row, especially coming after a record year, can cause real problems. In terms of the wildfire situation, it obviously doesn't bode well." Weather experts said the Santa Ana winds were expected to remain strong through Tuesday afternoon at least. hector.becerra@latimes.com