Tonight another fire, this one smaller but more local, darkened the skies over the western part of the Santa Clara Valley with smoke. At about 3pm, a grass fire broke out close to the onramp from San Tomas Expressway in Campbell onto Highway 17 southbound toward Los Gatos and Santa Cruz. By 4:30 or so, when I drove through, the plume of smoke rising was quite substantial. And by evening, the air was positively eerie in Los Gatos with strange tints coloring the sky and the landscape.

The late afternoon and early evening sky was a taupe color in places. Light coming in through the windows of our home was tinted a tungsten type of hue. This photo taken by Clair Handy from Bacigalupi Drive in Los Gatos (in Belwood of Los Gatos).

Another neighborhood view in Belwood.

View from the Handy Family backyard in Los Gatos - the wind made the smoke-filled areas very distinct from the cleaner sections of sky.



A (non-enhanced) view of nearby palm trees. The whole sky was just creepy looking.All of these pictures are unedited except for cropping, of course.



My sister, Barb, is visiting for a few days and she commented that the sky reminded of of when Mt St. Helen's blew in 1980. I was not around for that, but heard plenty about it from my many friends in Washington and Oregon. I don't think it was quite so dark, but it was certainly odd looking tonight.

Mary Pope-Handy