California's Camp and Woolsey fires air pollution seen from space and felt on ground

While I've been busy with national and Michigan stories, I've been avoiding writing about a major story that is taking place where I grew up, the latest destructive fires in California.  No more, as I found out last week that the home where I grew up was in a mandatory evacuation zone.  In the 25 years I lived there, that never happened.  In addition, I don't recall my family ever telling me that had happened during the three decades I've lived in Michigan until this past week.*  When I write that this story hits close to home, I mean it!

I begin with Popular Science, which uploaded This is What Wildfires Look Like from Space.

Satellites have captured images the wildfires currently devastating California. The Camp fire is the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state's history. Meanwhile, the Woolsey and Hill fires are raging in southern California. The size and destructiveness of the blazes can be seen by NASA satellites.

When I wrote 2018 on track to be fourth-warmest ever, I quoted Newsy observing "The heat certainly contributed to California's intense wildfire season."  Popular Science agrees with that assessment, as do I.  I have no patience for views that deny that, including the President's.

Follow over the jump for video reports about each of the fires currently or recently burning, beginning with the Camp Fire.

Catastrophe averted from solar flare and other space and astronomy news

Last year, I posted Meteors, solar flares, and U.N. action and The Weather Channel on solar storms about tracking, forecasting, and preparing for solar flares.  None of that compares to just plain luck in protecting our planet, as NASA Goddard pointed out in The Best Observed X-class Flare.

On March 29, 2014 the sun released an X-class flare. It was observed by NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS; NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO; NASA's Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, or RHESSI; the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hinode; and the National Solar Observatory's Dunn Solar Telescope located at Sacramento Peak in New Mexico.

To have a record of such an intense flare from so many observatories is unprecedented. Such research can help scientists better understand what catalyst sets off these large explosions on the sun. Perhaps we may even some day be able to predict their onset and forewarn of the radio blackouts solar flares can cause near Earth - blackouts that can interfere with airplane, ship and military communications.

Here's to the experience preparing us for the next time, should our luck run out.

Follow over the jump for news about more risks from space and other astronomy news.