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The CZU Complex fire started August 16, 2020. The cause was due to a dry lighting storm where over 11,000 strikes hit around the greater San Francisco Bay Area. This was the beginning of a devastating fire season in which over 4M acres of land would be consumed to this point. Unfortunately, California faces a year round fire "season".
The CZU Complex was several fires in both San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties that included two Calif. State Parks_ Butano and Big Basin. I have lived near this area all of my life, and what was so unusual was that our area does not experience much lighting at all, and if it occurs, it does not reach the ground with the frequency experienced last Aug. The ferocity of the lighting strikes that caused many of the fires, including this one, was unprecedented. The other contributor was the lack of moist air in the form of near daily fog banks that roll off the nearby Pacific Ocean to blanket the Coastal Redwoods that populate these parks.
Recently, I drove up a road that shows the devastation of the fire, but more interestingly, the rather rapid renewal of Nature restoring the area with ground plants and greenery on branches of the fire scared trees_ only 3 months after the fire. Besides the scorched conifer needles of the Redwood trees, undergrowth deciduious trees were losing their Fall color, many unbelievably, without fire damage. Much of the ground was ash and branch debris, but ferns were poking through the ash in green contrast to the burnt surroundings.
It was quiet enough to hear the slow trickling water in the nearby creek, and the solitude was like being in a outdoor temple of awesome power and beauty. The forces of Nature that awe and inspire.
Base of Redwood Memorial
Gazos Creek
Fern Garden
New Growth
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