“I thought my house was on fire,” said Rappahannock Record editor Robert Mason Jr., who said he awoke before dawn to the smell of smoke and ran from room to room looking for a blaze.

The smokey smell that permeated the air was the talk of the town, in grocery stores and across fences.

Rich Steensma, a forester for the Virginia Department of Forestry in Lancaster and Northumberland counties, said he received a number of calls asking where the fire was. The calls came from Farnham, Heathsville, Ottoman, Mundy Point and Weems, Steensma said.

“The haze was everywhere.”

More than 40,000 acres of peat was burning in the Dismal Swamp area of eastern North Carolina, Steensma explained.

The smoke from those fires climbed high into the atmosphere through a convection column and was then carried north by transport winds, he said.

When the air finally cooled enough, the smoke fell out of the atmosphere, and on Friday it just happened to land here in these two counties, Steensma said.

On Thursday, similar smoke had blanketed the Hampton Roads and Danville areas.

As the sun came out Friday afternoon and burned off the dew, the haze dissipated and it was gone by midday, Steensma said.