This past October, Southern California experienced a slew of wildfires that tore through most of San Diego County. On the first night of the fires, we were pretty sure that our house was far from danger. With the exception of extremely strong winds and a couple of power outages, the night was mostly uneventful. Halfway through the next day, however, the fires started coming close to where we live. The air got thicker, and ash began to fall. To be entirely honest, I love it when this happens. It actually brings some excitement to the somewhat dull mega-sprawl existence. By nightfall, we were evacuated to a relative's house near Mount Helix, east of downtown San Diego.

I stayed up most of that second night to photograph the fires coming up over Mount Miguel to the south of us. Stationed on the house's balcony, my main objective was to fight the winds that rocked my old cheap tripod.

As the night progressed, one could follow the path of the fire as it crept north over Mount Miguel. Though I had some difficulty at first getting a sharp shot of the night with the wind, the stars in the night sky really added to the mood of the situation.

The fire really demonstrated its full potential as it made its way over the ridge and into the valley below. Here you can see just how powerful the flames were. Though they may seem small in this photograph, closer inspection reveals that many of these flames were easily the size of a house, if not larger.

The following day, the fire was still burning at full force, though the situation seemed to be getting much better. The photograph above demonstrates just how saturated the sky was with smoke from the fires. Later on in the day, we returned home, though many neighborhoods near us were still smoldering from the flames the night before.

More photographs from this experience can be found in the flickr photoset.