And, speaking of fire...

Smokey haze masks the 
mountain viewed from 
almost the same spot today.

This is the normal (though
spectacular) view of Pioneer
Peak from my driveway.

… we have a few going on here.  The Funny River fire on the Kenai Peninsula was almost 63,000 acres (almost 100 square miles) Thursday evening (5/22).  That compares with the national news fire near Sedona, Arizona which was about 7 square miles Thursday morning.

We have another fire on the west side of Cook Inlet which today was threatening a major power plant at Beluga. Called the Tyonek fire, that one was 1,800 acres by Thursday evening.

Up north where the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline crosses the Yukon River there's another fire of 450 acres and growing within a mile of the Dalton Highway, the main surface connection between the North Slope oil fields and the rest of Alaska. That one has forced the closure of BLM facilities in the area.

This situation is so fluid I am not going to try to keep up, so for those interested here are some links to official sources for information about the fires:

Alaska Interagency Coordination Center

Alaska Interagency Incident Management Team Facebook page.

Alaska Interagency fire information mapping page

Funny River wildfire community Facebook page

Central Emergency Services

Alaska Wildland Fire Information  This is an interagency website developed by federal and state agencies in Alaska to provide timely and accurate fire information for the entire state. The agencies that support this site are the BLM Alaska Fire Service, Alaska Division of Forestry, US Forest Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Alaska Division of Forestry Facebook page

US National Weather Service Alaska Facebook page

BLM Alaska Fire Service Facebook page

InciWeb Funny River fire information

To check air quality

PDF: How smoke can affect health

The Alaska Life Facebook page has some good photos and video

Almost all of these pages have photos, maps and situation updates with more current information. Additionally just about every news outlet in the state has stories and photos about the fires.