Picture of the Day - What A Metz!

I missed all the excitement of the Metz Incident in Monterey-San Benito Unit of Cal Fire (BEU) today as I was oblivious to it until about dusk. At that point I went outside my house in Paso Robles to take a break from working on my senior project at Cal Poly and smelt smoke on the wind. I then proceeded to go back inside after walking my dog and checked my emails and the Hotlist. There I discovered this fire had erupted about 75 minutes north of me earlier this afternoon. Ordinarily I would have wanted to drive up and there and snap some images, but it's best I was oblivious and undistracted working on my homework. This 3,876-acre Metz Fire today follows the 3,712-acre Roberts Fire on the post of Camp Roberts two days earlier. Despite getting more rain this year than in the previous three rainy seasons, this part of California is thus far experiencing well-above average fire activity for this time of year which bodes ill for later this fire season. This image was captured from the air attack aircraft (the aerial spotter and air traffic controller for the incident). Image courtesy of Cal Fire (all rights reserved).