Last May, he posted photos of Eaton Canyon — green, everywhere, after a wet winter — to the social media platform X. What he saw scared him.

While the expanding atmospheric sponge effect is happening everywhere, changes in regional weather patterns are either countering some of its effects or else amplifying them.

"It was quite disorienting in the dark and it was very slippery. There was cooking oil and broken eggs everywhere."

“But I’ve never seen anything like this. I have people coming up to me every day, everywhere I go, reciting lines. We’re blown away by it, in other words.”

He grabbed his daughter and jumped in the car, but there was a long lineup of cars on the one road out, and the smoke was everywhere.