The Camp Fire covers San Francisco in smoke.

I've posted a lot of pretty pictures of California and have had fun writing about what was in them. Today is a different story.

This is not a cloudy or a stormy day in San Francisco as seen from our apartment. This is a day when the city and much of the Bay Area are enveloped in smoke from the deadly Camp Fire 200 miles away. 

In less than forty-eight hours, the Camp Fire destroyed the town called Paradise ("nestled among the Ponderosa pines") and became the most destructive fire in the history of California. That's saying a lot after last year's wine-country fires. As I write this, the wind in Butte County has picked up and over 100,000 acres are blazing. 

Here in the city, we are experiencing four days of "very unhealthy" air quality. Flights have been cancelled at SFO. All are advised to stay indoors with the windows closed. Fortunately our temperature is in the low 60s, so we're not tempted to open up and let a breeze through.

In the photo, the sky is gray at 1:15 p. m. The tall buildings in the picture are two blocks away. On the hillside beyond, we can see every single house on a clear day, not so much today. 

Simultaneously two major fires are burning north of Los Angeles.

Climate change plays a part in postponing our rainy season and encouraging these giant firestorms. According to officials at Cal Fire (the state's fire-fighting agency), another cause is people building houses on the edges of the forests.

​To protect those houses, we have put out every small fire for decades. In doing so we have not let the forests go through their natural cycle of burning underbrush. Now, when a fire starts, extraordinary amounts of fuel are on the ground.