It's ugly out there. Word in the newsroom is that Julian, a really nice little town, is in imminent danger of being wiped out by the blaze. Palomar Mountain is also being evacuated. Though the fire is apparently turning away from Escondido, the smoke there today was worse than yesterday.

As I drove down from Escondido to the Union-Tribune offices in Mission Valley the smoke was incredibly thick. It was about as bright as midnight with a half-moon. All cars had their headlights on and I could even see some evidence of the fire's passage near the state Route 163.

All county schools will be closed again tomorrow due to poor air quality. On one of the local radio stations they were saying that the air quality was basically off-the-scale bad -- more than twice what is considered the worst possible.