Stardate 20031030.1320

(On Screen): Henry wrote to point out a location online where regularly updated maps of forest fires can be found. They're generated as of 0300, 0700 and 1500 every day. I downloaded a bunch of them, and I've taken pieces of ten of them and made an animated GIF file showing the progress of the three main fires which threatened the San Diego region. (It's 430K so I didn't want to include it inline.)

It begins last Saturday afternoon and ends with the situation as it was at 0300 this morning. Each step is 12 hours. It's truly amazing to compare the map from Saturday afternoon with the one from 24 hours later:

It looks as if Sunday was the kind of day that firefighters have nightmares about.

Update: I guess I need to remind people that I have set up my server so that if pictures on it are linked directly, it refuses to send them and sends a small error icon instead. If you want people to see the fire animation GIF I created, you need to send them to this log entry, so that they can follow my link to the image.

Update: Based on the map from this afternoon, the fires are almost out, much earlier than they had earlier predicted. That's because the weather today was extremely kind to the firefighters. It was cold, overcast and misty. Short of a rainstorm, it was just about the best they could have hoped for.