Just down the road. [View all]

[CrispyQ]

I cry watching this. This wild fire happened about two miles down the road from me. All these houses burned to the ground in just a few hours. The sky was horrific with smoke and the sun cast an orange glow all afternoon and into the night. The firefighters spent the first few hours of the fire evacuating families and shoppers before they could even begin to fight the fire.

Today it's snowing. The wind that contributed to the fire's spread yesterday blew in our first real snow of the season. We usually have had some snowfall by now, but all we've had this season, until today, is a dusting a few months ago. Our last real measurable precipitation was in July. The plains are dry and crisp.

You see stories like this on TV, and it happened two states away, or on the other coast, but then when it hits in your own community, well, it's like a gut kick. We had some flooding back in 2013, which caused a lot of damage, but nothing like the destruction yesterday. Nothing like that.

Is that what it's going go take? Everyone has to experience a disaster just down the road before we start to do something about climate change instead of just talk about it?

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Costco evacuation - go to 20 seconds. That's smoke, not fog. The Target next door burned down.

The plains are on fire.

My heart is heavy today.