Ah choo!
While I was driving my daughter to school this morning, I drove past a corner of our property I can't see from the house, and to my dismay and alarm, I saw a puff of smoke coming out from the trees. I slowed down to look, but the smoke dissipated and there were no flames anywhere that I could see. I dropped off my daughter, drove back, and still saw no more smoke nor flames, so I wondered if it was perhaps pollen that I saw. I remember being in the Rockies during pine pollen season and seeing green clouds of pollen wafting on the wind, so I thought maybe this was juniper/cedar pollen. So I googled, because Google Knows All, and discovered that yes, cedar or juniper (same tree, different names) puff out clouds of grey pollen that look exactly like smoke:
That video, taken in east Texas, is far more dramatic than my little puff of "smoke", but you can see how, if you didn't know that was pollen, you might be calling the fire department (and that makes me wonder how many calls the fire department gets from people who don't realize that's pollen and not smoke!). I also wonder how many times I've looked out at our hills, which look pretty much like these in the video, and thought I was seeing mist rising when it was actually pollen.
Nature be crazy!
Click to viewThat video, taken in east Texas, is far more dramatic than my little puff of "smoke", but you can see how, if you didn't know that was pollen, you might be calling the fire department (and that makes me wonder how many calls the fire department gets from people who don't realize that's pollen and not smoke!). I also wonder how many times I've looked out at our hills, which look pretty much like these in the video, and thought I was seeing mist rising when it was actually pollen.
Nature be crazy!