Las Conchas Wildfire

So we have a second fire going. This one is in the Jemez Caldera -- across the way from the Sangre de Cristo's Pacheco fire -- and down wind of Los Alamos. The good thing is that the 2000 Cerro Gordo fire burned out a bit of the intervening land. The bad thing is that thunder storms -- not showers -- are predicted for the rest of the week.

I finally got around to shooting a little video of my UndMill on the deck around noon yesterday and then went out to lunch. The new fire started smack in the background of my video, so I guess it's my fault somehow. Here's the plume at around sunset last night (20:00, June 26) after it had burned for 6 or 7 hours, the sun is directly behind the smoke, more or less west-north-west from my house:

And here's what it looked like around midnight. Flames were just cresting the ridgeline above Bandelier on the other side of the Rio Grande river. Los Alamos is off to the right about 3 more fire-lengths, where  I estimate a "fire-length" to be about three miles:

 

This morning it was within one mile of the first LANL buildings. This is a mostly useless map from the NM Fire Info site. I can't distinguish any landmarks except I think the north side is along Highway 4 and Los Alamos is somewhere just off the east (right) side:

In the event that some dipwit tosses a cig out the window on any of the roads near my house I packed a bag and put the bunny on notice that he might be subject to a grab-and-run operation...backing up data now.