Texas "Snow"

The farmers are burning off their sugar cane fields.

The winds were fairly calm today, giving the opportunity to set fire to the cane. The smoke is black as coal, and comes up in a thick, boiling column. Sometimes we see only one area and other times we might see three or four - miles apart - at the same time. The fields burn so quickly it's hard to get a good photo. The above shot was taken too late to really show how much smoke is produced.
See the dark layer of cloud in the above photo? It's the ash produced by the burning sugar cane. It travels for miles before floating down in what the campers here call "Texas snow". The black ashes drift down out of a clear blue sky like snow flakes. All us rookie campers hurried out to hose down our steps and patios before we'd track the mess inside. The older residents of the park were using leaf blowers. If the ash had started falling again on the hosed down, wet pavement we'd have had a real mess.
My neighbor Linda told me about the ashes a few weeks ago. She was in the swimming pool last year when the ashes totally covered the surface. I'm really glad I had a warning.