Last week a prescribed burn in Big Meadow went "out of prescription" as they say. Since then the 90 acre burn has turned into 7,000+ and the meadow itself remains mostly untouched.In the few days following the ignition of the smoke was rather unpleasant to s
ay the least. The occasional snowing of ash was nice too but that really only happened once.
Here's a fun little comparison...the same meadow with and without smoke...
Much of the park is inaccessible from Groveland. The main road into Yosemite Valley was closed shortly after the fire started and more recently a section of Highway 120 over Tioga Pass was also shut down. With those roads closed there is little to do on this side of the park unless you want to detour 2-3 hours around to one of the other entrances. It is still amazing how many people are driving up the highway when it is totally engulfed in smoke...do you really want to see Yosemite that bad? I mean, you can't actually see anything with that much smoke. Depending on the day, there is enough smoke in the Valley to block the infamous view of Half Dome.
More fun details on the fire can be found at inciweb.org. You know, like colorful maps of everything that is now crispy.
