I could not look away. For an entire day, no matter where I was, my eyes sought out the awful (yet strangely beautiful) smoke from nearby forest fires.

The fires were so intense that by the end of the day they would have created their own weather system, clouds known as pyrocumulonimbus, which contain lightning storms that can in turn ignite more fires. An article in Scientific American says, when you see these clouds, “you know you’ve got big trouble below.”

near Chimayó, New Mexico
photographed 5.15.2022