A Dry Winter.

[nuranar]

After the Cobblestone Ice Incident of mid-December, and then some rain a couple of weeks later, we've had scarcely a drop of precipitation. To be precise, 0.33" total since 22 December.  Result 1: Lots of dead, dry grass about, and often high winds.  Result 2: Fire. 

Several times in the last couple of weeks I've smelled smoke. It's a mostly nice smell to me; it reminds me of reenactments and fireplace fires (although slightly different), and can be hard to distinguish from a true barbeque. Actually, that's the literal truth. Mesquite and/or hickory are the preferred woods for barbequing. But mesquite grows wild all over Texas. It's notorious for taking over former or hardly-grazed rangeland.

I can be reasonably certain that when I've been smelling it for 7+ hours, in a neighborhood pretty far from any barbeque restaurant, there's a fire burning somewhere.

Comments

[jordannamorgan]

*shudder* The smell of smoke most definitely does *not* have good associations for me. :\ I hope you're in an area safe from brush fires!

[nuranar]

I'm in a pretty good place. There's rangeland just up the street, but there are a good dozen houses between me and them. These fires just don't get to that point, when there aren't trees to speak of.