Another Big Fire Near Tahoe

 We almost felt guilty leaving the smoke that the Mosquito Fire has sent to the Tahoe Basin when we headed to the Mountain View Fine Arts Festival this weekend. The weather on the peninsula south of San Francisco cooled off and the air was very clear.

As of this writing at 8:30 Saturday night, CalFire's Mosquito Fire Incident report shows the fire has grown to 33,000 acres. For a size comparison, last year's Caldor Fire eventually torched something over 200,000 acres. The Mosquito Fire is currently 15% that size. But no one knows how much or how fast it will grow.

In classic fire expansion (as I worked into the story of Tahoe Blowup) the Mosquito Fire is making its own weather with a heat-created storm.

Here's what it looks like from a distance.

The good news is that few if any houses have burned so far. The fire is mostly in a wilderness. 

The bad news is that if its direction shifts much, there are communities that could be in its way.

We head home Monday and will get a closer look then.