Secondhand Smoke

Southern Nevada is a great place to live for a lot of reasons, including our almost complete lack of natural disaster potential. No hurricanes or tornadoes, no earthquakes or tidal waves, no volcanoes or floods or blizzards or avalanches, nothing much in the way of precipitation of any sort. We sometimes have magnificent lightning; it lights up with sky with vertical bolts like some Las Vegas stage spectacular, but it's rarely accompanied by rain or even serious clouds.

We do, however, have one geologic drawback and that's our proximity to California with its natural disasters galore. For the last three days, there's been an acrid smoky smell to the air - not unlike in the casinos with tired ventilation systems, but outside. The sun seems to be wrapped in a few layers of dirty cheesecloth. And there's a pall of very nasty-looking yellowish haze hanging over the Strip and other lower-lying areas. Obviously, this is not even in the same ballpark of important or threatening as the actual wildfires they're suffering in southern California, but it's mighty ugly and, in terms of what it means for broader air and weather patterns, it's disconcerting, too.