Too much Joe and Mariah; California Needs a Visit by Tess

Away out here they have a name for rain and wind and fire.
The rain is Tess, the fire's Joe and they call the wind Mariah.

The morning the news reports that almost 270,000 acres of southern California have burned since last weekend. In San Diego County alone, seven separate fires spurred the evacuation of 300,000 people—ten percent of the county's population. It seems that Joe is taking his toll.

Of course, Mariah is also doing her part. The desert winds stoked destructive wildfires and sent Joe blazing and skipping around so that he was much more difficult to contain.

For those who think of southern California in terms of celebrities, a bit of research this morning informed me that a ranch belonging to Sean Penn burned Sunday; properties owned by David Geffen, Barbra Streisand, Pierce Brosnan, James Cameron, Mel Gibson Olivia Newton John, Mark Hamill, and David Duchovny are threatened.

I suppose southern California could use some of the fire quenching power of Tess. Unfortunately, she isn’t in the southern California forecast.

And so I pray for rain, as well as the safety of the folks in California, especially the firefighters and those folks whose homes are threatened or who have already been burned out.

Tess, who we’ve seen for too little of here in Kentucky this year, has been visiting Louisville for the past 24 hours and the weather gurus predict that she’ll be visiting us through the end of this week.

Tess, Tess, go away

Of course, I am thankful for the rains. But, I am now being regularly harassed by Alex because, as I have written many times in this blog, he has an aversion to water. Even as I have been writing this blog, the furball has, as I reported in the post Rain, rain go away, been repeating his “I want to go outside” dance:

By the time Alex finished his breakfast and I was drinking my first cup of coffee, the boom of the thunder had diminished. Alex—as is his habit—stuck his claws into my leg to get my attention and meandered toward the front door. I followed him and opened the red door to the sight and sound of the rain. I stepped out onto the porch, but Alex backed up away from the threshold. As a cat, he has an aversion to water in any form—including rain.

So I came back into the house, turned on my computer, and began writing this blog. A few minutes later, Alex again used his claws—this time on my thigh—to get my attention. I jumped up and asked my feline master, “Now what do you want?” He strolled out of my library, through the kitchen, to the hallway that leads to the back of the house, and stopped by the back door.

“Alex, it is raining in the back yard, too,” I told him.

Of course, being the cat that he is, he didn’t believe me until I opened the door and he saw and heard the rain falling upon the deck. Alex looked up at me and, like my friend who had lived in Arizona, seemed to meow, “I hate the rain.” ~ Nick’s Bytes, March 6, 2006

Update from CNN

• More than a half million people have been ordered from San Diego County homes today.
• More than 1,300 homes have been reduced to ashes.
• The fires still threaten more than 56,000 homes.
• At least two deaths have been attributed to the fires.