Woke up just now to the smell of smoke. I’ve looked all around the house, inside and out; there doesn’t appear to be any fire here, anyway. I can smell it outside, especially in front of the house. Might be from a neighbor’s chimney…but the sky is clear, and there are no obvious plumes. (Most particularly, there are no obvious plumes coming from our roof!) Still, I can feel the smoke at the back of my throat and in my eyes.

And given the lack of immediate evidence of fire, my throat and eyes tell me there’s a forest fire somewhere in Southern California, close enough to smell but far enough away that I can’t see it. There’s no indication on any of the news web sites or the US Forest Service’s fire map, so remember, you heard it here first.

Update: There appears to be no forest fire anywhere plausible, nor is there smoke in the air this morning; possibly it was smoke from one of our neighbor’s chimneys. Weird, if so—it’s not hot here in SoCal like it is in the rest of the country, but it’s only getting down to 60 degrees or so at night.