The Chill in the Air
As I walked my 200 steps to work today, I was reminded that the winds in lower Manhattan get pretty crazy through the canyons of buildings. It is pretty much windy all year long, but today it was windy with a distinct chill of the impending season. It was sunny and the sky was blue, like waking up in the Dolomites or Alps in the morning, but the Weather Channel reports that with the wind it feels like 40 degrees. That’s a big change from Wednesday when I found myself working up a light sweat in 70 degree sunshine. The next week has highs ranging from 43 to 62 with the average daily high coming in around 54 degrees. I think this is called autumn and even here in the City, the arrested development trees have turned golden and red with the understanding that they go bare very quickly with a brisk cold wind in their face.
Who doesn’t like autumn? Last night was Halloween so everyone has the freak flag out of their system. That’s a trending holiday that just keeps getting bigger and bigger because it’s mostly about fun and has minimal solemnity attached to it. It’s now a four week rush to Thanksgiving and a sleigh ride to Grandma’s house. Normally I would ignore the sleigh comment, but my friend in Colorado tells me she has fourteen inches of snow already, so I guess some sleigh rides to Grandma’s house are still on. In the community I am moving to in California, there is a different type of chill in the air. It’s the annual Santa Ana wildfire chill. I have begun to be a regular visitor to the Cal Fire Map website, which tracks California wildfire progress. As soon as I get a Community Red Flag Warning email I immediate check out how close the fires are to our house. The good news for us is that this year (so far), San Diego is very little impacted, unlike in prior years. Not so for our friends in Sonoma or our relatives in Camarillo. Sonoma seems to have died down after a mere 78,000 acres burned and over 90,000 homes were threatened by the Kincaid Fire. PG&E blacked out all the surrounding areas to avoid further fire and wind-related problems with their powerlines and equipment. That puts a chill on lots of people’s plans for a comfortable life.
As for Camarillo, the battle is still in full-swing. What started as a fire in the hills above Santa Clarita changed into the Saddle Ridge fire in Simi Valley to the East and the Easy Fire in Simi Valley to the West. Meanwhile, the Palisades and Getty Fires were busy worrying the West-end Angelenos. It was all taking its toll on residents in Ventura County the most since PG&E also powered down hundreds of thousands of residents and they started to see fires to the North of them as well as the Maria Fire popping up before the fires to the East and South were near containment. That brings a whole new concept to being boxed in. Our relatives literally could not get through to the south to use our house in the San Diego safe zone. I guess they could drive to the coast and head up to Santa Barbara, but you need plenty of spare cash to make that gambit work for you.
When I called my friends in Sonoma to ask if they were OK, they said there were no worries since the fire was 95% contained and forty miles north of them. We are due to fly out there next weekend for a visit and I just hope forty miles is a far enough buffer to keep things safe for their recently renovated home. When I asked, my wry and somewhat curmudgeonly-disposed friend about how it all feels to live under that threat (since we are moving soon out into the belly of the beast), he said it was like the crazy aunt in the attic, you just whistle by it and don’t think about either the risks or the trends, but just keep an eye out.
We are at T- 7 weeks and counting until we start our drive out to San Diego to deposit our dog in his new permanent home (we move later, but the dog’s comfort is apparently what counts the most). I know I cannot stop the Santa Ana winds from blowing and if a wildfire is destined to take my community, all the brush clearing around my house will help, but not prevent an errant ember from deciding to take me down. I am unlikely to be that guy with the garden hose standing out in the driveway thinking I can beat back mother nature. I’m the guy who makes sure the insurance premium is fully paid up with Chubb so that we can get a hassle-free claim filed. What I am more worried about is the loss of power, if that is a new utility liability mitigation strategy we can all expect. I have solar installed and will soon install a Tesla batterywall, but I now have to ask how much battery capacity I really need to power my lifestyle in a shut-down. I suspect it will be one or two since I am not going to load up for Armageddon, but just try to survive off-grid only when absolutely necessary. I work with some guys who have a propane fuel cell that can power up the batterywall if it runs down, so I may do that (not unlike having a back-up generator, only far more eco-friendly).
I lived through two storm surge floodings in lower Manhattan, both of which led to evacuations (one lasting three weeks). I didn’t live here after 9/11, but that led to a two-month evacuation. Lots of crazy aunts in the attics of lower Manhattan too I guess. Florida has hurricanes (those crazy aunts may be more real than imagined since lots of old aunts live in Del Boca Vista), Arizona has sizzling heat waves that fry the egg in your brain, Manhattan has all that it has, Colorado has wet snowfall that smothers you, and California has wildfires this time and the San Andreas Fault sometime later. You can run, but you can’t hide. It’s like the demographics, the world is getting overpopulated, so just get used to it and make do. Invite your crazy aunt down from the attic to dinner and live with it.
The chill is definitely in the air, but it’s still a sunny cloudless day, so don’t waste your life worrying about what’s up in the attic. Embrace it, put on a windbreaker and wear a fleece. The world has always been a scary place, but it is most scary for those that let it scare them. I haven’t yet spoken to my friend in Sonoma’s twenty-five-year-younger common-law wife, but she may say that living in harm’s way is very different for her than it is for him. She may also say that there is, indeed, someone crazy up in the attic, but it’s more like an 82-year-old curmudgeonly uncle than a crazy aunt.