Beauty among the Ash.

This past week we've had Air Quality control issues in our area.  Due to Wildfires in the Central portion of Washington state there has been a lot of smoke and ash fallout.  We live in the S. Eastern corner of the state a good 2-3 hour drive away from the fires and this is what we woke up to the other morning.

Yes that is Ash from the fires.  It was everywhere.  On the roses, the ground, floating in the air and even on spiderswebs,

Why some people thought it was trying to snow but how could that be when our temperatures during the day are still in the upper 80's and low 90's.  Needless to say it's not so great for people like me since I have Asthma and it makes it very hard to breath with all the smoke in the air.  My niece's husband has been trying to paint a house on his job and said it was very difficult because the Ash kept falling onto the paint and making a mess of things.

However it has produces a really gorgeous orange sun.  Unfortunately it's very hard to capture.  This one shows a wonderful orange ring around the sun.

My favorite shot though is this next one.  I had sprayed some water on the driveway and later caught the reflection of the sun in the water and you can see the intense orange color much better.

We've had less then a 100th inch of rain here in "Wally World" (aka Walla Walla, WA) since July 1st.  There is however a 20% chance of rain this coming Thursday.  Maybe another 10-20 drops might fall if we're lucky.  So not normal for this area at this time of the year.

Still you have to admit that sun is beautiful.