All-time record high temperatures here today in San Diego, and now fire

[Stevo]

It hit 114 F (45.5 C) here in the San Diego East County today, and may even be a little hotter tomorrow. Alpine, the town just north of the Valley fire in the linked video, hit its highest reading ever of 113 F.

So of course, somehow a wild fire started. Here's the latest time lapse from 6-9 PM as it moves west (towards me). It's still under 2,000 acres, so is dwarfed by the mega fires in the rest of California, such as those mmikeinsantarosa has had to deal with the past few years, but we had been spared up to now down here. There are some misinformed people (to be charitable) that have said that California needs to "clean" its forests to prevent the fires somehow, but you can see that these hills have already been clean of forests since the end of the last Ice Age, and we still get the fires.

http://c1.hpwren.ucsd.edu/archive/lp-n- ... MP4/Q7.mp4

[Gordon Cooper]

45.5 C - Heck! We think is is too hot in NZ when we near 34 C (93F). That time lapse is impressive and a bit scary. South Island
here is getting over a 6,000 acre wildfire at present. Fortunately it snowed and rained dowsing much of the visible fire but it is continuing
with the old buried timber and firefighters are having to dig up the hot spots, may take months and winter is just finishing. Hopefully summer
may bring more rain.

[Stevo]

Ashes are now falling here in Santee like a gentle snowfall. I'm about ten miles west of the blaze, with a lot of suburban development between it and my location, unless it explodes and does an end-around to the north. Luckily, there's no wind--just a hot, still night. We aren't supposed to get hot, dry winds until Tuesday or Wednesday, so I hope it's contained by then, and doesn't generate any fire tornados.

The plume did generate some nice pyrocumulus clouds during the afternoon, though, which blocked the blazing sunlight here somewhat.

[Gordon Cooper]

Hope that the Cu buildup does not result in much static charge with lightning to start more fires.

[JayM]

I saw a comedian on YouTube the other night (it may have been Ross Noble) who commented on headlines that say things like "hottest temperature ever." He observed that "ever" means ever, that the earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and that in another 6 billion years the sun will turn into a red giant causing earth's temperatures to be in the thousands of degrees. He said that he's pretty sure that the hottest temperatures ever will be when that happens.

That fire will generate its own wind. Be safe, Stevo.

[Stevo]

We also now know that at certain times in its history, the earth completely froze over all the way to the equator, aka "Snowball Earth", like in the Snowpiercer film. (Boy, that sounds good right now). The last one was still before the advent of complex life, but after single cell bugs had already been around for billions of years. It's thought that the microbes survived the deep freeze in scattered volcanic hot springs under miles of frozen ocean until volcanoes added enough CO2 to the atmosphere to melt the ice via the greenhouse effct..

[Eadwine Rose]

Stay safe Stevo!

[Jerry3904]

Damn, that's hot! And dangerous.

I echo ER: stay safe.

[thinkpadx]

ya - that is really hot plus the humidity. went through 115 degrees for over a mont a few years back and it was disgusting! hope everything slows down and you and your are safe!

you contribute so much to debian and MX

thoghts go out your way!

[KBD]

I hope it cools down for you soon Stevo.
I think I saw earlier on the news that Boulder, Colorado will be 99 degrees, and a few days later 35 degrees and a winter storm watch. What is going on with the weather lately?