We've been through this for several years in a row now, and like every year it still comes as a shock.

Like you go outside and their air is so bad and it's sort of like you know you shouldn't be outside.

Yeah, well, and like you can see it, the air will be red. It's like it's out of a movie or something.

Yeah. It's really incredible.

Yeah, the air is red. There's ash falling out of the sky.

Oh my god. It's a sense that it's just for several weeks out of the year,

becomes close to uninhabitable.

From NPR, I'm Sam Sanders. It's been a minute.

This week, all those fires, you just heard from Farhad Manjoo. He's an opinion writer at the New York Times,

and he's talking about what we've all seen these last few days. The smoke.

The temperatures are starting to increase today. The winds are starting to pick up.

The flames. Strong winds and dry conditions could ignite new blazes and those creepy, creepy orange

and red skies. Entire towns have now been wiped off the map.

It's been a rough time out west. It's fire season right now, and this is one for the record books.

And California alone, this year, more than three million acres of the state have burned.

For perspective, that is ten times the size of a regular fire season's burn.

Multiple fires are still active, thousands of homes and buildings have been destroyed,

and this historic devastation, it is all over the west, Oregon, Washington, not just California.

Right now, it looks like there is no end in sight. So, later on in the show, Farhad and I will talk

about how the west, particularly California, it may not be such an ideal place to live anymore.

But first, we're going to talk to a California resident who had to flee her home recently,

because of those fires. One of the neighbors came and she said, she's like, I know you're new here,

...