The West is on fire

[Razors Edge ★]

39 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

This Old House did a series this year on rebuilding Paradise

 

[Page Turner]

...hey @Razors Edge , here's a link on a couple of firefighters they had to grab at night with a helicopter down near Santa Cruz in those fires earlier.  Do you think they ought to withhold the expenses for the rescue out of their overtime pay ? I mean, they knew shit was on fire, right ? Fuckin' boneheads. 

 

 

[Razors Edge ★]

1 minute ago, Page Turner said:

..hey @Razors Edge , here's a link on a couple of firefighters they had to grab at night with a helicopter down near Santa Cruz in those fires earlier.  Do you think they ought to withhold the expenses for the rescue out of their overtime pay ? I mean, they knew shit was on fire, right ? Fuckin' boneheads. 

Exactly!  Should have known better and been prepared!

[Dottleshead ★]

2 hours ago, MickinMD said:

On last night's TV news, they said 3 out of every 16 homes in all of California is under potential fire threat.

WOW!

Yeah, that's crazy.  California is a big place too.

[Dottleshead ★]

Somewhere across that bay is Seattle.

 

SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 11: A cargo ship is silhouetted in front of the Seattle skyline due to smoke from wildfires on the West Coast, as seen from West Seattle on September 11, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. According to reports, air quality is expected to worsen as smoke from dozens of wildfires in forests of the Pacific Northwest and along the West Coast descends onto the region. (Photo by Lindsey Wasson/Getty Images)

[Dottleshead ★]

As two major fires in Oregon -- the Beachie Creek and Riverside fires -- threatened to merge in the coming days, air quality levels have badly deteriorated from smoke. Four of the top five cities worldwide with the worst air pollution are in the region -- Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Vancouver, according to IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company tracking pollution levels.

[Dottleshead ★]

Bonehead journalism.  Vancouver's nowhere to be found in that link.

[Ralphie ★]

2 hours ago, Dottles said:

Bonehead journalism.  Vancouver's nowhere to be found in that link.

it is third. 

[shootingstar]

5 hours ago, Dottles said:

As two major fires in Oregon -- the Beachie Creek and Riverside fires -- threatened to merge in the coming days, air quality levels have badly deteriorated from smoke. Four of the top five cities worldwide with the worst air pollution are in the region -- Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Vancouver, according to IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company tracking pollution levels.

in Vancouver there is no air conditioning in the building..dearie was actually wearing his mask indoors.  He gets quite affected by forest fire smoke now ...

[Dirtyhip]

Woke up to AQI above 300.

[Scrapr ★]

according to this air quality map Seattle area is in the low 200's. Portland area is in the mid 300's. Bend is in the low 600's. 

https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/mAQI/a10/cC0#9.72/47.8308/-122.1585

The winds stopped yesterday. They were fanning the fires. We got an onshore flow that reversed the East wind. The onshore (ocean) flow brought more moisture (humidity) & turned the fires back on themselves. Monday forecast is for rain & showers. It will help with the fires but won't put them out. Rain should clear the stagnant smokey air too

[Dirtyhip]

4 minutes ago, Scrapr said:

according to this air quality map Seattle area is in the low 200's. Portland area is in the mid 300's. Bend is in the low 600's. 

https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/mAQI/a10/cC0#9.72/47.8308/-122.1585

The winds stopped yesterday. They were fanning the fires. We got an onshore flow that reversed the East wind. The onshore (ocean) flow brought more moisture (humidity) & turned the fires back on themselves. Monday forecast is for rain & showers. It will help with the fires but won't put them out. Rain should clear the stagnant smokey air too

332 here at the moment.  

[Razors Edge ★]

5 hours ago, Dottles said:

Bonehead journalism.  Vancouver's nowhere to be found in that link.

 

3 hours ago, Philander Seabury said:

it is third. 

It must be dynamic or regularly updated?

[Ralphie ★]

5 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

 

It must be dynamic or regularly updated?

Sounds good. Let’s go with that!

[Dottleshead ★]

4 hours ago, Philander Seabury said:

it is third. 

Oh weird!  When I clicked on the link last night, it was not found!

[Page Turner]

4 hours ago, shootingstar said:

in Vancouver there is no air conditioning in the building..dearie was actually wearing his mask indoors.  He gets quite affected by forest fire smoke now ...

...if you have your own heating system, with a filter you can access, there's almost always some way you can run it without heat, just as a filtration fan unit for your living space.  The benefits you get for your indoor air vary depending on the efficiency of the filter you install.  I've been doing that here, on an off, with our central heat and air system...no heating or cooling, just fan and filtration.  It's not perfect, but it helps. My airways are somewhat reactive to smoke as well, so I might look online to see if I can order a better filter to use for the next couple of months.

If you don't have something you can access, because of the way your building is constricted, you can buy a couple of these cheap HEPA units and stick them in different rooms.

[Dottleshead ★]

2 hours ago, Page Turner said:

...if you have your own heating system, with a filter you can access, there's almost always some way you can run it without heat, just as a filtration fan unit for your living space.  The benefits you get for your indoor air vary depending on the efficiency of the filter you install.  I've been doing that here, on an off, with our central heat and air system...no heating or cooling, just fan and filtration.  It's not perfect, but it helps. My airways are somewhat reactive to smoke as well, so I might look online to see if I can order a better filter to use for the next couple of months.

If you don't have something you can access, because of the way your building is constricted, you can buy a couple of these cheap HEPA units and stick them in different rooms.

But you have to be careful with hepa filters on your furnace. Some furnaces literally cannot push air through it.

[Page Turner]

20 hours ago, Dottles said:

But you have to be careful with hepa filters on your furnace. Some furnaces literally cannot push air through it.

...yeah. the best I can do here is some sort of multi layered electrostatic doohicky, that said on the advertising literature that it forms a charge as the air passes through it, which attracts the finer particulates.  It definitely helps, because before I started running the furnace on fan, I was developing a constant runny nose.  It goes away if I stay indoors now.

 

Everyone at the farmers market this morning looked a little dazed and shell shocked.  The smoke here has been going on for about a month now, with only one small break a couple of weeks back, which was created by the wind that immediately created more ginormous fires (Creek fire and Bear fire).  We're gonna need to rename one of the seasons.

[Dirtyhip]

23 hours ago, Page Turner said:

...if you have your own heating system, with a filter you can access, there's almost always some way you can run it without heat, just as a filtration fan unit for your living space.  The benefits you get for your indoor air vary depending on the efficiency of the filter you install.  I've been doing that here, on an off, with our central heat and air system...no heating or cooling, just fan and filtration.  It's not perfect, but it helps. My airways are somewhat reactive to smoke as well, so I might look online to see if I can order a better filter to use for the next couple of months.

If you don't have something you can access, because of the way your building is constricted, you can buy a couple of these cheap HEPA units and stick them in different rooms.

Sadly, we can't filter the air going though our wall furnace.  That unit is not built to use a filter.  I asked my husband if we could just tape one to the intake on the outside of the unit.  It's a gas fired unit and my husband thought my idea would burn the house down.

Our hext home will have good air filtration and modern heating units.

[Dottleshead ★]

19 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

Everyone at the farmers market this morning looked a little dazed and shell shocked.  The smoke here has been going on for about a month now, with only one small break a couple of weeks back, which was created by the wind that immediately created more ginormous fires (Creek fire and Bear fire).  We're gonna need to rename one of the seasons.

Yeah none of this is normal. Drought everywhere.

[Page Turner]

<<<<<<--  You Are Here

[Dottleshead ★]

5 hours ago, Page Turner said:

Everyone at the farmers market this morning looked a little dazed and shell shocked.  The smoke here has been going on for about a month now, with only one small break a couple of weeks back, which was created by the wind that immediately created more ginormous fires (Creek fire and Bear fire).  We're gonna need to rename one of the seasons.

How about nuclear wasteland?

[Prophet Zacharia]

If you guys don’t stop burning down forests, you’re going to drive our dinosaurs to extinction again. 

[Dottleshead ★]

4 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

If you guys don’t stop burning down forests, you’re going to drive our dinosaurs to extinction again. 

The irony here is the dinosaurs may have the last laugh

[Scrapr ★]

21 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

If you guys don’t stop burning down forests, you’re going to drive our dinosaurs to extinction again. 

Yay! More peak oil

rain forecast Monday night & Tuesday in Portland. Possibly will clear out the air. 

[Dirtyhip]

I know it is really hard for us Westies right now.  We need to stay positive, as much as we can.  Air is terrible, but we can wear particulate masks and this should be over soon.  Fire season will hopefully end by October.

[Page Turner]

3 hours ago, Dirtyhip said:

I know it is really hard for us Westies right now.  We need to stay positive, as much as we can.  Air is terrible, but we can wear particulate masks and this should be over soon.  Fire season will hopefully end by October.

...if you live in California, in one of the burned over areas, that's when the mudslide season begins.

[Razors Edge ★]

18 hours ago, Dottles said:

Yeah none of this is normal. Drought everywhere.

If something happens year after year, when is that normal?  If something slowly grows and affects more and more areas, when is it normal?

I think this is normal. It's just what was normal for a small part of CA has grown to be the normal for larger and larger areas and now is letting OR, WA, CO, and other western places know they needs to pay attention.

[Dirtyhip]

23 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

If something happens year after year, when is that normal?  If something slowly grows and affects more and more areas, when is it normal?

I think this is normal. It's just what was normal for a small part of CA has grown to be the normal for larger and larger areas and now is letting OR, WA, CO, and other western places know they needs to pay attention.

New normal?

I think this is moving eastward too.  This new normal affects about half of the US.  

[Razors Edge ★]

Just now, Dirtyhip said:

New normal?

I think this is moving eastward too.  This new normal affects about half of the US.  

I don't think "new" is necessary. CA wildfires now have quite a long history, and have been growing in strength and spreading in area for a couple decades now.

It is just "normal".  Abnormal will be if it stops - both happening and spreading.

[Dirtyhip]

Just now, Razors Edge said:

I don't think "new" is necessary. CA wildfires now have quite a long history, and have been growing in strength and spreading in area for a couple decades now.

It is just "normal".  Abnormal will be if it stops - both happening and spreading.

I remember many years of no fires in the summer, or very minimal ones.  This last decade has became scary.

I talked to my husband about having go bags ready and a plan.  Especially, since he often has the family car. 

[sheep_herder ★]

Tragic, that things have to get extreme, before people become aware and get excited. Hard for some to get excited and plan ahead, when events move very slowly over time. Fires that are burning now appear to be fueled by dry timber resulting from 'drought' but also by some very unusual wind events, that occur infrequently. Some would call this a 'perfect storm'. We see these types of events happen annually in Montana, with some years worse than others. We are under a 'red flag' warning today with temperatures in the 90s and high winds, that increase the potential for severe fires.

[jsharr ★]

It may be in this thread but TLDR.

Why does Canada not seem to have the same problems that the US has?

Different land management practices?

Different climate?

Seems strange they would stop at the border.

[sheep_herder ★]

29 minutes ago, jsharr said:

It may be in this thread but TLDR.

Why does Canada not seem to have the same problems that the US has?

Different land management practices?

Different climate?

Seems strange they would stop at the border.

Some of all of the above, but they do, just not this year. Seems like they were burning 2 or 3 years ago. I let the Canadian forum members verify or dispute this information. Seems like when they were burning we were not to the degree you are seeing this year. Google is your friend!!

[Dottleshead ★]

32 minutes ago, jsharr said:

It may be in this thread but TLDR.

Why does Canada not seem to have the same problems that the US has?

Different land management practices?

Different climate?

Seems strange they would stop at the border.

They are more northern for sure so different climate particularly the farther north you go.  But not different results.  Canada has been on fire in B.C. for years.  A couple summers ago we were pounded by smoke for about a week when their fires ran rampant.  

[Dottleshead ★]

The Canadians also have a very aggressive logging industry.  

[Razors Edge ★]

18 minutes ago, sheep_herder said:

Some of all of the above, but they do, just not this year. Seems like they were burning 2 or 3 years ago. I let the Canadian forum members verify or dispute this information. Seems like when they were burning we were not to the degree you are seeing this year. Google is your friend!!

Also, likely related to the same "Atlantic Ocean vs Pacific Ocean" thread, where high winds, weather patterns that bring moisture (or drought), and such are all different as you move around the globe.  Even things like the various tree-killing bugs infestations that may be regional and related to temps or other climate variations.

It likely has a lot of a "human component", but assigning which humans is likely really really tough.

[Longjohn ★]

59 minutes ago, jsharr said:

Seems strange they would stop at the border.

Canada has their border closed. Won’t let them in.

Vancouver is surrounded by water, the fires swim from the US and start the fires there.

[Page Turner]

9 hours ago, jsharr said:

It may be in this thread but TLDR.

Why does Canada not seem to have the same problems that the US has?

Different land management practices?

Different climate?

Seems strange they would stop at the border.

...there have been a number of recent large fires in Canada, but they don't have the same population densities and houses in the places they have been happening. Thus less newsworthy here.

List of fires in Canada

Same thing in some of the more remote forest areas of Russia. Not much news coverage, they just let it burn.

[Page Turner]

13 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

I don't think "new" is necessary. CA wildfires now have quite a long history, and have been growing in strength and spreading in area for a couple decades now.

It is just "normal".  Abnormal will be if it stops - both happening and spreading.

...this kind of fire is not the old kind of fire.  We didn't get the same explosive growth and mushroom clouds back when I was involved.

The Forest Service used to have smoke jumpers, crews that would parachute in to remote areas and build firebreaks to try to control the more remote ones. The way these fires behave, it would be pretty iffy to dump a crew in the middle of one of these large fires. Not sure what those guys are doing now, but my guess is they are working in other ways than parachuting into a very random fire environment to take their chances.

 

The Creek fire went from almost invisible to 250,000 acres in 24 hours.  That is some kind of fire.  That's like nothing I ever saw before.

 

In a situation like that, there are not enough resources early on to work on containment.  Everyone is more or less working on evacuation and trying to protect structures.So the fire just keeps on getting bigger and bigger.  If only we had done more raking. I could just kick myself now

[Dottleshead ★]

10 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...this kind of fire is not the old kind of fire.  We didn't get the same explosive growth and mushroom clouds back when I was involved.

The Forest Service used to have smoke jumpers, crews that would parachute in to remote areas and build firebreaks to try to control the more remote ones. The way these fires behave, it would be pretty iffy to dump a crew in the middle of one of these large fires. Not sure what those guys are doing now, but my guess is they are working in other ways than parachuting into a very random fire environment to take their chances.

 

The Creek fire went from almost invisible to 250,000 acres in 24 hours.  That is some kind of fire.  That's like nothing I ever saw before.

Our entire state has been blanketed by wildfire smoke for over a week now that's literally covered the entire state plus the entire state of oregon. That's a helluva square mile area. Throw in half a state of California and there's some serious shit burning. I mean that's Texas sized. It's all over the West and the latest forecast is it's going to be with us another week.

[Page Turner]

6 minutes ago, Dottles said:

Our entire state has been blanketed by wildfire smoke for over a week now that's literally covered the entire state plus the entire state of oregon. That's a helluva square mile area. Throw in half a state of California and there's some serious shit burning. I mean that's Texas sized. It's all over the West and the latest forecast is it's going to be with us another week.

...the really big fires here will continue to burn in the more remote areas until we get significant rain.  That's how it works herre, and that will probably not happen until the end of October at the earliest. The Santa Ana wind season is just now starting up in SoCal, so they are gonna see some more big fires for sure.

[shootingstar]

33 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...there have been a number of recent large fires in Canada, but they don't have the same population densities and houses in the places they have been happening. Thus less newsworthy here.

List of fires in Canada

Same thing in some of the more remote forest areas of Russia. Not much news coverage, they just let it burn.

I agree with Page. Unless several people died, I guess forest fires in Canada don't penetrate international news. There is every single year, multiple wildfires in B.C., Alberta and northern Ontario.  One has to go to each provincial govn't site to see the data. And if there is a single national data source...it will have been published after the fires but might be abit delayed. https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/home

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/wildfire-situation  for instance b.c.  The annual threats tend to be in the wine growing region inland in B.C. (in addition to forested areas) where it is quite dry, not totally desert and in the forest.  2 years ago there were 130 different wildfires burning in the summer in British Columbia.

https://wildfire.alberta.ca/wildfire-status/default.aspx  We just had a fire north of mountain resort in Banff National Park in past wk. It burned for a few days.  The authorities have traced to someone not putting out their camp fire completely.  1-2 yrs. ago, There was a major fire in northern Alberta that really affected Fort McMurray (meaning destroying homes) which is near the oil sands.

https://www.lioapplications.lrc.gov.on.ca/ForestFireInformationMap/index.html?viewer=FFIM.FFIM

There have been fire bans in VAncouver and Calgary..just recently.  We got some rain after not having rain for 2 wks.  

 

[Dottleshead ★]

2 hours ago, Page Turner said:

...there have been a number of recent large fires in Canada, but they don't have the same population densities and houses in the places they have been happening. Thus less newsworthy here.

List of fires in Canada

Same thing in some of the more remote forest areas of Russia. Not much news coverage, they just let it burn.

Notice the frequency of fires in the century compared to the previous one.

[Scrapr ★]

Air Quality report

After about 5 days at or above the top of the scale for Air quality (>500 +/-) we are seeing a little relief. It was sub 300 most of the day. Now in the 225 range. Which is still a health alert zone. Sub 150 is better (but still high)

There were a few drops of rain last night. Not much wind. Better chance of rain clearing the air Thursday late into Friday

This is a weather caster that I like. He has a FB post showing a back burn from space. that line of fire is 'protecting' that interstate highway above it (Hwy 26) Since 2 or 3 passes are closed in the North/Central part of the State Hwy 26 is kinda important. I'm headed back to bend on thursday but not going this way

 

[Dottleshead ★]

After 10 days of being socked in thick wildfire smoke, Western WA is finally under good air quality! Air Quality Alert expired at 11 a.m. Saturday. So goodbye smoke, we won't miss you!

[shootingstar]

Today is mid-life level smoky air here in prairie city.  I did only half distance of cycling today..and took leisurely ride to go shopping at farmers' market, have my latte, etc.  It's grey the whole day.

I can smell some smoke inside at home at night this weekend.  We are getting blown over from Calif., Washington state..it travels this far, folks.  Very far.

[sheep_herder ★]

7 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Today is mid-life level smoky air here in prairie city.  I did only half distance of cycling today..and took leisurely ride to go shopping at farmers' market, have my latte, etc.  It's grey the whole day.

I can smell some smoke inside at home at night this weekend.  We are getting blown over from Calif., Washington state..it travels this far, folks.  Very far.

Their smoke has traveled all the way to Europe.

[shootingstar]

32 minutes ago, sheep_herder said:

Their smoke has traveled all the way to Europe.

I knew that the smoke travelled as far as Toronto..they got the smoky haze recently.