Historic wildfire in New Mexico the size of Chicago

[John Kasaian]

I just saw the satillite photos. Aye carumba!
This can't be good!

[lecarp]

Link to satellite photos?

[John Kasaian]

Link to satellite photos?

Here you go-
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2012...-complex-fire/

[Donald Miller]

I noticed that the link was of an earlier report. This is a link to the statistics yesterday.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/02/us/new...ion=cnn_latest

[Preston]

More info on InciWeb: Whitewater Baldy Complex


--P

[Heroique]

Firefighter language borders on poetry.

Here’s the fire’s current “behavior” from Preston’s link above:

Fire was active after the inversion lifted with isolated sustained torching and upslope runs producing up to 200ft flame lengths resulting in short ranch spotting. The continued backing fire behavior displayed 2-4ft flame lengths in the ponderosa pine and 4-8ft flame lengths in the mixed conifer. Rates of spread from 2-6 chains per hour (one chain equals 66 ft).

[Heroique]

BTW, 6 chains per hour (the fire’s upper speed range) is about 6 or 7 feet per minute.

[E. von Hoegh]

Chains?? Are these guys time traveling?

[Drew Wiley]

Big fires are a fact of life in the West; and things are only going to get worse due to climate change and irresponsible suburbanization of fire-prone vegetation. I've live thru a
couple of fires bigger than the one in New Mexico, at least at its present size. Pretty scary. When I was a freshman in high school most of my classmates were homeless due to forest fires. We keep five acres mowed and green around our house, with a metal roof and double-width tractored fire guard around the perimeter. But burnt land is also photographically intesting afterwards. I did a lot of Cibachromes which picked up all those
strange iridescent purple-blacks and so forth quite well.

[domaz]

Chains?? Are these guys time traveling?

From Wikipedia:

Also in the United States the chain is normally used as the measure of the rate of spread of wildfires (chains per hour), both in the predictive National Fire Danger Rating Systems as well as in after-action reports. [3] Under the U.S. Public Land Survey System, parcels of land are often described in terms of the section (640 acres or 259 hectares), quarter-section (160 acres or 64.7 hectares), and quarter-quarter-section (40 acres or 16.19 hectares). Respectively, these square divisions of land are approximately 80 chains (one mile or 1.6 km), 40 chains (half a mile or 800 m), and 20 chains (a quarter mile or 400 m) on a side.