[tubebender]

A tropical front is moving over Northern Cal. Could bring lots of BAD BAD Lightning to the mountains. I remember flying from SF to Eureka one night when there were many many fires burning. You could see them from the coast to Mt Lassen. This was in the late 80s.

[Grampa Dave]

I remember flying from Eureka to Sacramento on an evening flight in the fall of 1976. It was a drought year and there were fires from Eureka to Redding due to electrical strikes.

That was on the famous Eureka Aero. We had this crazy pilot who flew in Nam and flew the fire retardant planes when he wasn't flying for Eureka Aero.. He went down into the canyons to check things out for the fire drop guys. Then, he radioed to the forest service planes where to drop the retardant.

My boss at that time, who is now 80 something was on that flight, has never forgotten that flight, nor have I. Crazy George, the pilot got fired later from Eureka Aero. Rumors was that after takeoff from the field in Arcata he rolled the plane in a 360 while going over the euc trees and over the ocean.