About 5 years ago I decided to stop watching local news because of the paucity of news that is actually covered. Lately I’ve been skipping local print news outlets as well. So though I knew about the rampant numbers of wildfires in California, I knew very little. I’ll sheepishly admit I did not even realize that the reason the recent sunsets (that made me recall time ins Loas, Bangladesh and Indonesia) was due to the heavy smoke in the air.

So this morning I wanted to get an understanding of the “1,000 wildfires”. Let me be the last to report, it’s awful out there. Up and down the state of California dozens hundreds of fires are destroying forests, human residences and animal habitats. Lighting strikes (many not even associated with storms) as turning the tinder into roaring fires.

But I wrote this entry because I was surprised and impressed by the up-to-date and highly informative web-based information and data being shared by state and civic agencies and a couple print media outlets.

CAL Fire, The CA Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has a very up-to-date, data-rich website.

This is a section of a PDF updated as of this morning at 8am


 
This chart is from a larger PDF this is updated weekly.

(Go to the CAL Fire incident homepage to see links to the most up-to-date PDFs)

 
California’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) has made available an interactive Google Map to details active fires, new fires, contained fires, shelters and other resources.


 
The Sacramento Bee is adding the CA OES interactive map with links to photos from fires they have covered. They also have an extensive photo slideshow.

 
The CA OES also posts smoke plume maps. Here’s a screen shot.