Today has been a crazy day, after staying awake a lot of the night watching the events unfold around Monchique I woke to the reports that the fire was “heading towards São Marcos da Serra”. It seems as though the media mis-interpreted the authorities and over-exaggerated the situation. I headed to a nearby ridge to see for myself and indeed the fire was nowhere to be seen, just distance plumes of smoke. Later in the afternoon, I ventured further afield to locate the fires. It was a long way from the village which at one point did flare up quite large, however, after what seemed like it was left to burn most of the day, a few airplanes later and the smoke seemed to disappear to almost nothing.
There are still fires burning, however, the local village (and our Quinta) seem to be well out of reach currently. For the last few nights I have posted bright red glowing sky photos, but tonight, the skies are much much darker with just a faint red glow which I assume is from the fires re-establishing in the Monchique area.
You may remember a photograph I posted back in January where I used a Cork Oak as a silhouette against the setting sun.
Tonight, this same tree was backlit by the red skies of the fires. It may seem a bit dramatic, however after the last couple of nights, this is now very tame compared to what we have seen. Hopefully, the horrible events of the last few days are coming to an end.
{Click image(s) to view on Flickr - opens in new tab}Here is the photo I took back in January (Original blog post can be seen HERE)