Last night's winds were unbelievable.
They snapped one of our backyard market umbrellas in two, and we spent the afternoon eyeing one of the tall trees in our neighbor's yard, which looked perilously able to topple into ours.
So it was a relief to make it through the night without any loud thuds.
When we left the house this morning, my husband took his camera. He was hoping to capture some spectacular photos of the city on a clear day.
But the air was hazy. And it shouldn't have been hazy after a day and night of gusty winds.
That kind of haze on a day like today can only mean one thing: brush fires.
With record low rainfall this year, everyone was predicting a really bad fire season, and unfortunately, the experts were right.
At this posting, there are nearly a dozen brush fires raging all over Southern California. I know, because I can't sleep -- am stuck in front of the news, watching the footage and wondering if this will be the year our luck runs out.
"Don't worry," my husband tells me. "This neighborhood should be safe."
He's right. It should be. The nearest fire is a good 11 miles away. Of course, that's the one that traveled 20 miles in the space of a few hours, so I'm not feeling all that reassured.
He might be a little worried, too, because when I asked him to get down the cat carriers -- just in case -- he did it. And we had a quick discussion about what we would bother to take if we do have to evacuate.
I made the same kind of list two years ago, when several fires met in the middle to create a super-fire, that was, at times, just five miles away from us. I packed a little bag and put it in my car -- just in case.
I'm superstitious enough to think that an evacuation will occur when I'm NOT prepared. So taking some action and thinking about it now is the best way to insure it isn't going to happen.
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