11/22 Atlas Peak Fire, Napa, CA

I got a chance today to see some of the area that burned near Napa, CA.  The area near Atlas Peak, just east of the town is where the fire started and did most of its damage in the first few days.  Anyway, I took photos from the open window while someone else drove.  The quality is not always very good because there were very few places to pull over to take better photos.  Also, it was cloudy today, but maybe I will try going up there again on another, sunnier day. 

One interesting thing is how spotty the burned area is.  On this hillside, you can see black areas where all vegetation is completely burned down to the soil.  In other areas, you will see trees that looks yellow as if their leaves are turning colors for fall, but those are trees that are singed, but still standing.  And other areas are green, where the trees have not been turned at all.  This fire did a lot of hopping around.

You can see more completely burned, just singed, and not burned at all areas.  The vineyards, by the way, were seldom burned because they were green at the time from being watered.  In these photos, the leaves were really turning yellow for fall.

Napa had some rain right after the fires and some rain about a week ago, so the burned grass is now turning green from new growth, as you can see in the area next to the road. 

This park of Atlas Peak is really badly burned.  You can see the trunks of burned trees at the top.  Closer to the road, trees were just singed.

There are a lot of fears about erosion, so we noticed a lot of banks along the road that had been sprayed with a mixture of grass seed and ground mulch.  Very few trees in this area change color or lose their leaves in the fall, so all of the yellow parts of the trees have been singed.

Notice how the bottoms of these trees were singed, but the tops are still alive. 

This part of the mountain shows heavy damage and mostly completely burned trees. 

As we got closer to the Silverado Country Club area, there were more homes.  Some were burned and some were not.

This was a very pretty area, by the way, in spite of the burned areas.  The road was curvy and hilly, so most of these homes had really beautiful views.  We noticed a lot of work going on, but it was hard to tell what kind.  One startling thing, however, was the unpleasant smell--very different from your typical campfire. Notice below, the burned homes but the green of new grass sprouting after the rains.

You can tell by the chimney in the middle of this photo that there used to be a house here.

Obviously, cleanup has not begun with this burned house.

Northern California is entering its rainy season, so these natural areas ought to start recovering from these awful fires soon.  It will take a lot longer for homes to be rebuilt.