Approximately three weeks ago, a very small weather system passed over Northern California. It produced no rain, but much lightning, an extremely rare phenomenon in California (i.e. the lightning). As a result, over 500 fires were started in the Northern and Central part of the state. They raged for several weeks, and produced abundant smoke throughout the region. Every day the sky would turn brown and you could smell it day and night. It was very concentrated in the Central Valley of California, which sits between two mountain ranges with no easy outlet for such smoke. Every day during this 2-week period, the smoke would drift into the SF Bay Area where I live. In combination with an intense heat wave where the temperature went above 107, the physical atmosphere was turning poisonous. Eve