SMOKY SKIES

This is not fog.  Nor is it a low-lying cloud.  It's smoke.

Here's a pulled-back view that gives you a better idea of its scope.

The smoke is billowing up over the Bradshaw Mountains from a controlled burn in the Prescott National Forest south of Prescott. The Forest Service hopes, by doing these burns, to prevent an out-of-control wildfire. The forest comes right up to Prescott and could do serious damage.


A few years ago, just such a fire scared the daylights out of a lot of people in Prescott and several outlying homes were lost.

So, in spite of a certain number of people who complain about the smoke drifting into town every time there is a controlled burn, it's probably a pretty good idea.

Feeling burned up?

So, this fine Thursday, let's see what's going on in our neighboring "city".

Prescott is known to some as "Everybody's Home Town."

To others, it's just "P-town."

If you lived around these parts, you might have been heading for the hills this week.

Or, "from" the hills if they looked like this.

But, not to worry. It's just the annual ritual called "slash burning". The Forest Service burns off some of the dead trees to keep them from burning in an "uncontrolled burn" later in the year. One of those fires, apparently started by homeless transients, nearly burned the town out a few years ago.

So every year, the Forest Service tries to protect folks from themselves and we see letters to the editor in the paper about all the terrible smoke.

Ho hum.