Note
After three fairly windy days, it developed that was only a warmup for today, when the wind setting was "full blast." I had something to drop off at the Post Office, and naturally I thought I would just bike down there. Which I did, but I wasn't even halfway there and already I was thinking that maybe that hadn't been the smartest choice--it was really windy, and very gusty on top of that, and it made bike handling quite difficult.
I ran trails in the late afternoon at Happy Jack, and by then it had been blowing hard for maybe 18 hours or so. Not surprisingly, lots of dead trees were down across the trails. At least on the trails I was on, none of them didn't have at least one tree down on them. My guess is that in the overall Happy Jack area, trees in at least the high hundreds must have blown down today and last night. To top it off, after it was already dark and I was headed back to parking, I heard a sizeable tree crash to one side about 100' away.
Still, for all that, it hardly makes a dent in the standing dead beetle kill pine trees up there.
Also, while running back in the dark, when I got a big view out over the south near the end, it was easy to see a distinct, big red glow from the Cameron Peak Fire off in the distance. The big wind revved up both that fire and the nearby Mullen Creek Fire today--though no updates this evening about either fire's activity today.