Anyone else been seeing this on the news? I am right in the middle of this ring of wild fires here in Southeastern Arizona. Can see the the smoke cloud from the Horseshoe 2 fire burning over 150,000 acres in the Chiricahua National monument and can see the flames of the Monument Fire from my house, the Monument Fire burning in Coronado National Forest just south of Sierra Vista right near the US/Mexico border is only about 10-15 miles from my house. It's burned over 5000 acres now and 0% contained, thankfully I doubt my place is in any danger since I am in a much more populated area close to the base down here, highly unlikely that they would let it get that far, but it is climbing the ridge of another mountain right next to the first one that burned and spreading onto the valley floor. They've also brought in the "hot shot" crews which I guess are the special wildfire crews for this one and I've heard fire trucks going by all day. The local news is saying that it's burned a few structures so far including a couple of houses in that area. I've also seen on the news now that the Wallow Fire in east central Arizona is the largest in AZ state history at over 450,000 acres burned and spreading/already spread to New Mexico.
I've had friends who grew up in LA tell me that they would never have a house built in the trees because of fires, sadly in this area there are quite a few houses near the Monument Fire in wooded areas and news is saying a couple houses have been burned already and they are evacuating people in that area.
Pretty crazy stuff going on though, we desperately need some rain here in Arizona. What's really bad is that it's way too dry here with no rain in the past few months and the east coast and midwest are getting way too much rain and flooding.
A few pictures of the Monument Fire from earlier today south of Sierra Vista (from the local/Tucson news website, not taken by me)
And one from last night before the winds picked up and made it alot worse today (again, none of these taken by me, all from the local news website)
These pictures seem to be from around noon today as it's looking quite a bit worse now. Where's the rain when we actually need it?