The “Break it Down” Blog

(Live Map Link)

For the folks that this caught completely off-guard (like myself), there are fires raging out of control in California right now so wide-spread and sweeping that 300k (yes 300,000) people were evacuated as early as 6am PST this morning with possibly 100k+ more to follow.

The Big Picture blog has a lot of information on charities to donate to in order to help these people that no longer homes or are holed up in Qualcomm stadium, local gyms or other meeting areas.

CNN has live coverage of the fires with the culprit being a “perfect storm” combination of not just the fires, but the Santa Ana winds rushing through CA super-charging the fires.

Currently 13k homes have been destroyed with potentially 72k more set to be destroyed if the fires are not contained. Reports early this morning said that the fires were “0% contained” at this time, with more than 7k firefighters fighting the fires.

The fires have already scorched 425 square miles of land from north of Los Angeles to southeast of San Diego since the weekend.

Update #1: Patrick Norton just sent in some pretty amazing links from NOAA showing satellite images of the smoke blowing out of CA from the fires out over the ocean: