A honey bee visits a sunflower in this photo taken by Ciarra Begovich and submitted by Dixie Martin.
Genoa, Nev. — All Douglas County schools are closed today due to smoke from the Caldor Fire. An air quality sensor in Minden was reading 656 or hazardous at 5 a.m., well above the 500 threshold where Carson Valley schools close. Even the sensor in the Ranchos was running 389 and was trending higher.
The smoke was so bad in Minden that it was setting off a resident’s smoke detectors, prompting a visit from East Fork firefighters. While the smoke detectors were deemed faulty, the smoke could well have contributed.
The Caldor Fire is continuing to burn on either side of Highway 50 around six miles from Echo Summit, according to Federal Information Resource Management System mapping.
There were some flare-ups visible from the Leek Springs fire camera as the smoke lifted near dawn. I looked at a couple of the fire cameras around the fire, but the smoke was too thick to see much.
Between the fire and the smoke, tonight’s concert in Minden Park is canceled as are Andy’s Ride for Suicide Awareness and the concert Shoe Tree had planned on Saturday.
As if there wasn’t enough going on, that spot west of Walker is bouncing around again with a 4.3 magnitude and a couple of threes in the swarm. They were likely barely perceptible to people in the vicinity.
We might see a little relief from the smoke tonight from a wind shift to the northwest, according to the National Weather Service in Reno, but it won’t be much and it won’t last long.
Expect smoke and haze through the day with the high climbing to near 90 degrees, though the smoke might have a little to say about that. The northwest wind will pick up at 5-10 mph tonight.
Kurt Hildebrand is editor of The Record-Courier. Reach him at khildebrand@recordcourier.com
