Beautiful but dangerous.

The picture looks like a bank of clouds in the distance. It is the smoke plumes from a fire that is about 15 miles away. The plumes rise 12 to 14 thousand feet from the fire, and the fire itself has been growing by thousands of acres a day.

Wildland fire is not something we on the east coast see very often, and it generally isn't as wide-spread, quick-moving, or downright dangerous as what many are out west. Just to give an idea, Washington DC is 68 square miles, a square mile is 640 acres, DC is only 43520 acres. The Meriwether/Ahorn (both managed by the same team) are over 56,000 acres, and they grew by more than 10,000 acres in yesterday's situation report. These kinds of fires would swallow the size of DC every few days.