Inattentiveness probably also played a role in what happened later in the evening, when after nodding off in the chair in the backyard I returned indoors to soon find that my hands were itching. On close inspection I found two large mosquito bites, one on each hand. Some time later I remembered that I have some ointment, so I put that on them and the itching eventually subsided.
The air is still somewhat crappy, though less so by night than by day. The moon still has an orange cast to it, but there is little smell of smoke in the mild nocturnal air. Friday I heard fairly frequent planes flying over, though about half of those operating from Chico airport are turning east, so I only see those in the distance and don't hear them. The ones that fly south and west are sometimes very low over the neighborhood, and can be quite loud. Despite the number of planes headed in that direction, little progress has been made on the fires they are probably fighting. Those fire were still only 35 percent contained by Friday night, as they were the previous might. The Butte County fires to the east are now 72% contained. The fire east of San Jose is up to 40% containment, but the Santa Cruz fire is still down at 27%. Even once these fires are contained they will continue to burn for some time, so we're probably going to be having smokey air through much of September, if not into October. By then the fall fire season will be underway, and look out!
Hotter and dryer weather is due for the weekend, and there is still some possibility of lightning storms in the far north of the state and in the Sierra, so the situation could easily go back to dire quite rapidly. This is being a very long summer. The long range forecast is saying we could start getting some more triple digit highs late in the first week of September, too. Will I ever get a day cool enough to find out if I still have enough energy walk over to the plaza? I might need a wheelchair by then.