About 100 miles out in the high desert, driving from Las Vegas towards Los Angeles, the sky started to turn grey with smoke, and the morning sun became a red ball, its sun spots clearly visible.
Near the San Bernardino forest the heavens changed colour, from grey to dirty green to pink-tinged chocolate, bringing an apocalyptic darkness to the scrub and cactus-filled landscape.
The car radio cackled urgently with orders for mandatory evacuations from Crestline, Lake Arrowhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Jay, Arrowbear, Seven Oaks, Big Bear Valley, Rimforest and a dozen other mountain resorts.
The headlights of cars, pick-up trucks and SUVs, their seats piled with clothing, penetrated the ash-filled air like laser beams as they streamed down from the mountains.
And then suddenly, at 5,000 feet, near Big Bear Lake, there was sunshine, making the waters glisten and casting shadows among the deserted streets and abandoned ski cafes of the alpine-like villages.
But this was the most dangerous place of all. The Santa Anna wind had shifted, and sent fire rushing up the ravines south of the sky-line. It seemed only a matter of time before they would start to devour the A-frame cabins, wooden ski lodges and expensive homes set among disease-ridden pine trees, their needles hanging brown and brittle due to the ravages of the Western bark beetle.
I came across exhausted firefighters trying to make Highway 18 a line of defence, dousing trees on the northern side from tanker trucks.
However, just past Running Springs, as I was talking to a soot-blackened fire chief, burning embers the size of shuttle-cocks flew overhead and ignited trees on the other side. Confused rats ran around our feet, then scurried back across the road as the trees exploded in columns of fire.
The fire trucks roared off up the road to try to form a new line to protect the 19,000 homes and 2,000 businesses from which 50,000 people had been evacuated.
"We're absolutely heartbroken," San Bernardino county supervisor Mr Dennis Hansberger told reporters. "We tried our best to prevent this, but it appears our worst fears are being realised today."
The spread of the fire into the San Bernardino resorts was one of the most dramatic developments yesterday, in what Mr James Wright, of the California Forestry and Fire Protection Department, called a "history-altering event; the most devastating natural disaster California has faced".
Yesterday, the toll in the fires, which stretch in an arc from the Mexican border to north of Los Angeles, was 16 dead, more than 2,000 homes destroyed, 650,000 acres burned and a bill estimated so far at $2 billion.