As I was walking through my living room today, I looked out the window and saw nasty-looking brown clouds on the horizon. Suddenly, the Ring Neighbors notifications that had been coming for the past half hour made sense. I thought Simi was going to lose their minds. If they were preparing to evacuate from a fire burning 40 miles away, downwind of us, with perfectly clear skies overhead, then a sky full of smoke would surely send the whole town into a panic.

Never mind that the Hughes fire was even further away than the Palisades fire or that the wind wasn’t blowing nearly as strongly as it was two weeks ago. It was upwind, and the smoke polluted the skies above us, so I could kind of understand the alarm. More so than two weeks ago, anyway. At least this time, there is evidence that a fire is burning somewhere.

The fact remains, however, that Simi Valley is in no real danger of burning. We’re not going to have hurricane-force winds like we did two weeks ago. The Santa Ana winds will blow like they do every year in mid-January through tomorrow, then they will subside, shift from the west, it’ll rain over the weekend, and then this fire season will finally officially be over. Then, we can focus our attention on the flooding and mudslides.

I just wish people would familiarize themselves with their surroundings, climate, weather patterns, and the natural rhythms of the place they live. It’s incredibly liberating. When you understand what is and is not a threat to your safety, it frees your mind to focus on what’s actually important. And then, I won’t have an endless stream of notifications from people asking if they need to evacuate from a fire burning 40 miles away.