Cooler today, too, down to 27° overnight and just 58° now.
The last few days were another matter entirely.
As you know, we have been having warm weather the last few weeks. Friday in particular was a gift: warm and just a touch breezy. I spent the entire afternoon on our courtyard porch (what we are now christening the reading porch), reading a good book. What a treat!
Then Saturday the winds picked up and the temperatures did too. We flirted with 80! Topped out at 79° here at Happy Camp, and the breezes were rather brisk.
We noticed smoke, which prompted a call to a neighbor, since the mesa was obscuring the source of the smoke and we were first concerned about Phase 2.
As it turned out, the fire was well away from Deer Canyon. It broke out Saturday afternoon in the Rio Grande bosque near Bernardo — north of Hwy 60 and east of I-25. It has burned about 2000 acres, is now 25% contained, and seems to be well under control at this point.
Early Saturday evening, as a test, Donna and Jane activated the emergency phone tree with info about the Bernardo fire, letting DCP residents know that we were not immediately threatened (it's 40 miles away, after all) but to be aware of the situation. Donna reports that the phone tree functioned well; but I have to admit that I didn’t have a current copy and for a while the HOA site would not respond. So when we picked up the message on our machine that was left as part of the test, I ended up calling a friend to find out who I was supposed to call on the phone tree. Oops! (Sorry, Donna! I’ve got it now! And I printed out a second copy for our bug-out bag.)
Yesterday the smoke cleared out of our skies, but that was only because of the incredible winds we were experiencing. Sustained winds around 20 mph (doesn’t sound like much until you’re in it all day) combined with gusts up to 45 mph. Knowing that there was an active fire out there did not make the day pass any more comfortably.
So we are very glad that a cold front came through overnight and today is only slightly breezy.
Just for your information, a much larger fire sprang up yesterday in Ruidoso. The break in weather is really helping the firefighters there, too.
If you think about us, send us some (lots of) rain, okay?