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The West is on fire


Dottleshead
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20 minutes ago, Dottles said:

And we haven't even hit the window when the season really gets bad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/us/wildfires-live-updates.html

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Depends upon what part of the west you live and recreate in on a daily basis. We are always concerned about fires in August and September. We welcome rains and some snow before hunting seasons begin. Those storms often occur with lightning and high winds. I would think eastern Washington relates more to our system than western Washington where you live. Just my take!

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9 minutes ago, sheep_herder said:

Depends upon what part of the west you live and recreate in on a daily basis. We are always concerned about fires in August and September. We welcome rains and some snow before hunting seasons begin. Those storms often occur with lightning and high winds. I would think eastern Washington relates more to our system than western Washington where you live. Just my take!

We are having wildfires sprout in the west now. Nothing to see here folks.

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1 hour ago, Longjohn said:

But it is an every year thing isn’t it? It seems like it anyway.

Pretty much the case.  As @sheep_herder notes it depends where in the west but the southern areas like where I’m at it’s Aug - early November.  NorCal & up probably Aug - Oct but it depends on local weather conditions.

The West is a big place and although it is bad in certain areas the entire west isn’t burning. Just pockets of it.  Different pockets lite up every year...

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1 hour ago, Longjohn said:

But it is an every year thing isn’t it? It seems like it anyway.

Yes, but that is the nature of the ecosystems that exist in the west. Take for instance our area, 85% of the green forage is produced by 1 July and 95% by 1 August. Depending upon the year, there may be a lot of standing dead forage, that burns real well when, lit by careless campers, etc. or lightning. Some years are more productive than others, and more general rains usually do not occur until later in the autumn. What you have to remember, that the west has vast acres of range and forest lands, and not croplands and green pastures that exist in your neck of the woods. Not sure what type of data Dotties is writing about, but the situation is rather cyclic in our area. California does in fact have a fire season, often associated with the Santa Anna winds and a very volatile fuel load, and a lot more people located in some of these areas. Back to the west in general, forage which is not reduced by grazing or controlled burns, and lack of removal of beetle killed trees adds to the problem in many areas. I can write more, but I'll stop here.

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47 minutes ago, sheep_herder said:

Not sure what type of data Dotties is writing about, but the situation is rather cyclic in our area.

There countless more data sites out there. But this one from NASA is a good start.

https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2830/six-trends-to-know-about-fire-season-in-the-western-us/

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10 minutes ago, Dottles said:

There countless more data sites out there. But this one from NASA is a good start.

https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2830/six-trends-to-know-about-fire-season-in-the-western-us/

Interesting article, glad to see them talk about the pine area in the southwest and how the fires burn the understory, but not so much the pine. My wife worked on research projects in this area while we were at the University of Arizona. Also, the reburning in southern Idaho and SE Oregon is not unexpected with the acres and acres of rangeland covered with annual bromes, highly flammable species. I see some were questioning the reburning and management in those areas. I did not read further, so do not know if they addressed their concerns. Drought is a way of life for those of us living and working on rangelands, and it does not take too many days without rain to start seeing a change in the vegetation, and increased potential for fire. People are continually concerned about this problem. Sorry to say, but a good forage year that produces fat livestock grazing these ranges, also provides fine fuels for range and forest fires.

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2 hours ago, Longjohn said:

But it is an every year thing isn’t it? It seems like it anyway.

The last couple years have been pretty good.  

Not sure if these are worse or hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes would be worse. 

All natural disasters suck.  Fires will be heading eastward at some point too.  

 

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3 hours ago, Philander Seabury said:

If the Cascades start burning then we really have a problem. 

3 of the 4 pass roads from Bend to the Valley.  are closed due to fires & high winds last night. I have to go over Wednesday. Hopefully the main road i take opens up. This all happened last night with high winds

The main road North of @Dirtyhip is closed. One main road to the beach (coast) is closed

https://www.tripcheck.com/

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6 minutes ago, Kirby said:

I don’t understand the big deal with gender reveals.  Here’s how ours went: Dr. Do you want to know gender? Us- Yeah.  Us to family, hey we’re having a girl!  Family- cool!  Repeat 4 years later with boy...

No pyrotechnics involved...

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This also reminds me of earthquake reporting.  The media will focus on that one building or the most damaged area when 99% of the area was undamaged... People back East think SoCal is in ruins when just a very small part of it is.

Suxs bad if you are the small % impacted but the vast majority isn’t.

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2 hours ago, Kirby said:

 

2 hours ago, ChrisL said:

I don’t understand the big deal with gender reveals.  Here’s how ours went: Dr. Do you want to know gender? Us- Yeah.  Us to family, hey we’re having a girl!  Family- cool!  Repeat 4 years later with boy...

No pyrotechnics involved...

I like to shoot fireworks and celebrate my heterosexuality all the time.  Not.  I choose to celebrate it in other ways.

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6 hours ago, ChrisL said:

Pretty much the case.  As @sheep_herder notes it depends where in the west but the southern areas like where I’m at it’s Aug - early November.  NorCal & up probably Aug - Oct but it depends on local weather conditions.

The West is a big place and although it is bad in certain areas the entire west isn’t burning. Just pockets of it.  Different pockets lite up every year...

Just terrible...Vancouver BC is getting the fire smoke blown over from California now.  When I skyped with dearie today, he was wearing a mask.  The place doesn't having AC, so all windows were open. :(  He is sensitive to wildfire smoke now.

He also hates AC and is sensitive to AC, meaning he also gets a headache.  

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4 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

Yes, but that is the nature of the ecosystems that exist in the west. Take for instance our area, 85% of the green forage is produced by 1 July and 95% by 1 August. Depending upon the year, there may be a lot of standing dead forage, that burns real well when, lit by careless campers, etc. or lightning. Some years are more productive than others, and more general rains usually do not occur until later in the autumn. What you have to remember, that the west has vast acres of range and forest lands, and not croplands and green pastures that exist in your neck of the woods. Not sure what type of data Dotties is writing about, but the situation is rather cyclic in our area. California does in fact have a fire season, often associated with the Santa Anna winds and a very volatile fuel load, and a lot more people located in some of these areas. Back to the west in general, forage which is not reduced by grazing or controlled burns, and lack of removal of beetle killed trees adds to the problem in many areas. I can write more, but I'll stop here.

I might have sounded unintelligent, so correct me if our lst observation is wrong. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-quality-bc-washington-state-fires-1.5715806

Not sure if there's much burning in Washington state right now.

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2 hours ago, shootingstar said:

I might have sounded unintelligent, so correct me if our lst observation is wrong. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-quality-bc-washington-state-fires-1.5715806

Not sure if there's much burning in Washington state right now.

Oh there is. Not California burn but quality burn nonetheless.

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10 hours ago, Dottles said:

It's gotten far worse. I can easily provide you stats.

...on average, the fire season here in California is two full months longer than it was when I moved here in '83. that fire I posted about with the National Guard helicopter evacuations is some scary shit.  The smoke plume formed a cloud that was visible from space,  and it got up to the 45,000 foot level.  That's the shit that makes it's own weather. It's in the area of the Sierra along the upper forks of the San oaquin I am always talking about, where you go in on Kaiser Pass road to Mono  Hot Springs on the south Fork, just downstream from Edison lake. Still lots of hikers stuck up there in various spots, waiting for extraction.

That was day before yesterday, and today we had an all day high winds event state wide. The Santa Ana winds are just beginning down in Socal.  And the earliest we can expect some decent rain is probably the middle of October.

It was ugly here today, with somebody touching off a grass fire out near the airport that went to 850 acres before 100 responding firefighters (that's a lot for a damn grass fire), got it knocked down.  We could see the smoke plume from mmy house, and it looked like one of those movie scenes with a prairie fire coming at you from afar.

 

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6 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...on average, the fire season here in California is two full months longer than it was when I moved here in '83. that fire I posted about with the National Guard helicopter evacuations is some scary shit.  The smoke plume formed a cloud that was visible from space,  and it got up to the 45,000 foot level.  That's the shit that makes it's own weather. It's in the area of the Sierra along the upper forks of the San oaquin I am always talking about, where you go in on Kaiser Pass road to Mono  Hot Springs on the south Fork, just downstream from Edison lake. Still lots of hikers stuck up there in various spots, waiting for extraction.

That was day before yesterday, and today we had an all day high winds event state wide. The Santa Ana winds are just beginning down in Socal.  And the earliest we can expect some decent rain is probably the middle of October.

It was ugly here today, with somebody touching off a grass fire out near the airport that went to 850 acres before 100 responding firefighters (that's a lot for a damn grass fire), got it knocked down.  We could see the smoke plume from mmy house, and it looked like one of those movie scenes with a prairie fire coming at you from afar.

 

I'm always surprised how most folks around the country continue to dismiss this like no big deal.  I guess the coasts will continue to get pounded with more hurricanes on record than ever before and we out West continue to watch our states burn.  Nothing to see here. 

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In my 50 years of living in Western Washington, I have never seen a wildfire break out on the west side of the Cascades.  We've got multiple fires over here as of today.  Winds coming out of the east -- always a bad omen.  Tacoma, Graham, Olympia, and Sumner/Bonney Lake.

 

 

Far worse in the central/eastern part of the state.  @sheep_herder.  Low humidity and higher winds.

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3 hours ago, Dottles said:

It's just open space.  Nobody gives a shit.  Let it burn.  Global warming is a hoax.  Who needs trees?  Come to think of it, who needs glaciers? 

I think you need a nap. Hard for some to conceive the far reaching impacts these fires have, but others are concerned and don't just have this type of callused attitude. However, many folks this day in time cry 'hoax' about things that they feel will impact their independence. Thus, covid, global warming, etc. are currently the hot topics, and there will be others. We are always glad when fire season is over when fall rains occur and eventually the ground is covered with snow. Then the cycle begins again.

I did find it interesting that the fire season has extended to 4 months in California. Do they feel this is related to global warming? Several of our fire crew members use to travel from our base in Colorado to California in the 60s to hang around and fight fires for extra money to help with school expenses. We were on an inter-regional crew that went where needed during the summer months, and we were once held over in Fresno over Labor Day, in case things blew up. Dottles, what has been the ignition source in many of the fires in Washington?

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8 minutes ago, sheep_herder said:

Dottles, what has been the ignition source in many of the fires in Washington?

I honestly have not heard. I just know arguably the dampest climate in the United States is on fire. In all seriousness it could be an anomaly but they have been saying for years now the western side of the Cascades will no longer be void of these things. I'm anticipating this will become a trend. Time will tell.

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8 minutes ago, Dottles said:

I honestly have not heard. I just know arguably the dampest climate in the United States is on fire. In all seriousness it could be an anomaly but they have been saying for years now the western side of the Cascades will no longer be void of these things. I'm anticipating this will become a trend. Time will tell.

I've not traveled that much on the west side of the Cascades, but have driven through thick smoke in both eastern and central Washington. Could be their predictions are correct for the western side. One does not necessarily notice changes that occur slowly overtime, until it is eventually too late to correct the problems. Don't know if you remember the video I posted a while back of the cheatgrass invasion in SW Colorado, but it happens. Those of us living in our environment, know a drought is just around the corner, and may be short- or long-termed. During the long-term droughts, timber begins to dry and can become very explosive. Forage growth is much reduced during these times, but lightning strikes in the dry time can set off some very large and damaging fires. Thus, with these conditions in our environment, folks may be hard to convince that it is due to global warming and not just climatic cycles at work.

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5 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

I've not traveled that much on the west side of the Cascades, but have driven through thick smoke in both eastern and central Washington. Could be their predictions are correct for the western side. One does not necessarily notice changes that occur slowly overtime, until it is eventually too late to correct the problems. Don't know if you remember the video I posted a while back of the cheatgrass invasion in SW Colorado, but it happens. Those of us living in our environment, know a drought is just around the corner, and may be short- or long-termed. During the long-term droughts, timber begins to dry and can become very explosive. Forage growth is much reduced during these times, but lightning strikes in the dry time can set off some very large and damaging fires. Thus, with these conditions in our environment, folks may be hard to convince that it is due to global warming and not just climatic cycles at work.

Yeah. I'm not necessarily jumping on the GW bandwagon but things are changing. I don't think any of it is good. 

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My cousin and I talked on the phone yesterday,  

He lives in Chico.  He has lived and worked in smoke all summer.  He wears a dual canister dust mask.  My cabinets might be made by him if I can afford that cab place.  All handmade stuff.  :wub:  Anyway, he was having an anxiety attack, as he kids were evacuated from their home in Talent.  He felt helpless from where he was at.   was not sure if they were coming to my house or not.  In the end they fled to an area south of Umpqua to her family place.  This is after their home burned down in Paradise.  He is one of the displaced from that event.  He lives with his family and she is in Medford.  The marriage didn't make it through the flames.  

This is Western life.

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