In this NASA image, smoke from the two areas is seen drifting to the north and east, i.e., toward San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Valley. In the image, vegetation is shown in red; naturally bare ground is tan; burned ground is charcoal; smoke is light blue.

Portions of the scenic coastal highway (Highway 1) were closed. In addition, all three (rare) California condor chicks in the area may have been lost. The condor is the largest bird in America. The birds were nearly extinct in the 1980s, but the population has been slowly re-started. Big Sur is one of the sites where hatching in the wild has occurred.