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Thread: Smoke smoke everywhere

  1. #11

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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    Sitting on my patio in Grand Junction, CO I now know what the people of Pompei must have felt. It is snowing ash from a massive fire 20 miles or so north of here up in the Bookcliffs. It's raging through mostly wilderness scrub and juniper with no sign of stopping. Interstate 70 is closed as well as Douglas pass. 2020 truly is the apocalypse!

  2. #12
    http://www.spiritsofsilver.com tgtaylor's Avatar
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    Here in the bay area things have deteriorated since I posted this post Wednesday on my blog: https://spiritsofsilver.com/blog/wildfires_8192020. Big Basin State Park, California's first state park, is on fire as is Pt Reyes National Seashore. Even Ano Nuevo on the immediate pacific coast is either on fire or at least threatened. On the evening news last night they showed a video clip taken from Pigeon Point light looking east that showed a line of fire moving across the ridgeline towards the ocean. Even Lick observatory was threatened last night with several of the employee residences burned and they are worried about the fire returning tonight. All parks in the east bay are closed as is many if not all in the greater bay area and the city of San Jose is now surrounded by wildfires with zero containment and is reminiscent of Stalingrad being encircled by the Russian army during WWII. Although I don't expect it to come to pass, all of my cameras, lenses, telescope, binoculars and negatives are packed in their hard waterproof cases ready to go and the car has 3/4 tank of gas.

    Thomas

  3. #13
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    Hard to say the long term effect on natural things. The headwaters of Alameda Creek contain the some of the largest oaks in the world, and how well they survive really depends on how the fire behaves, and how it moves. Redwoods like in Big Basin are naturally fire resistant, but the overall ecosystem might shift, with watersheds diminishing with less forest cover. The loss of homes and ranches is of course tragic, but California brush is genetically engineered to want to burn every few decades, allowing fresh growth. Native Americans cleared land with fire for millennia. But now there's the thousand pound gorilla of rapid climate change hanging around; and that's a very bad mix with residential sprawl into the woods. Grasslands will recover quickly, perhaps even better. Health-wise, bad air quality plus thousands of people being evacuated and potentially forced into closer proximity in shelters or whatever is its own perfect storm during a pandemic. The climate is already past a dangerous tipping point, and there are still millions of dead trees out there. Fortunately, there has been some progress with the learning curve, with evacuations proceeding better. Some lives have just been lost, but not as chaotically as the last two years. Having survived several major forest fires myself in my youth, it has always astounded me how quickly people forget, and fail to prepare in wooded areas. Now, maybe at last, it's starting to become a priority.

  4. #14
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    There's some relief on the way with the Pt Reyes fire in terms of coastal fog again. The fire is still confined to the coastal side of the ridge between the ocean and Mt Wittemburg in Woodward Canyon, which has a trail visited far less often than the Bear Valley trail below the mountain. There are some lovely old growth firs higher up in the cloud forest area. Some old growth has no doubt been lost in the canyon itself; but that's just part of an inevitable cycle, especially in the vicinity of bishop pines which burn like crazy when old. For every bishop pine which burned about 20 years ago in the nearby Mt Vision fire, about another 30 sprung up within just a few years, until competition for light causes most of the competitors to die off into thick branchy underbrush, and begin a whole new cycle. The forest will recover, and the fire is still quite a ways from Bolinas or any other structures. Further south, Big Basin lost most of its facilities and campground, so that will probably be closed awhile for repairs after the fires end. The old growth redwoods themselves have already endured many such fires over the centuries. Chaparral lost in the even bigger fires between the coast range and central valley rejuvenates in 15 years or so; but one of the pioneering species soon after a fire is poison oak.

  5. #15
    Land-Scapegrace Heroique's Avatar
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    Quick note: If you see a fire and think it's new or unreported, call 911.

    There are additional ways to report, but this is easy to remember.

    Our D.N.R. in Wash. state is asking people to do this.

  6. #16
    Vaughn's Avatar
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    Well, before it gets too hot, I'll run the 3006 Drum full of 5x7s...tap water and room both at 74F. Outside it is 83F, down from 88F earlier, clear air, some clouds...too beautiful, knowing what the rest of the state is going through.

    I am glad I got out of fire-fighting when I did...I was only 36, but I wanted to get older, have a family, and all that cool stuff.
    "Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China

  7. #17
    http://www.spiritsofsilver.com tgtaylor's Avatar
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    Here in California it would be difficult to determine if a fire was new or unreported as there are several hundred burning and are reported as complexes such as "CZU Lightning Complex Fire" which contain several fires over a wide region. Anyway there isn't much CalFire can do that it isn't already doing as, according to the late newscast last night they said that they were out of engines to deploy and were awaiting several hundred to arrive from as far away as the east coast and even Australia.

    Thomas

  8. #18
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    The worst case I experienced as a kid was when an arsonists drove up the road south of Yosemite and set several fires which then merged. Back then they determined the acreage as estimated according to specific source, even though it was basically a single premeditated fire over 400,000 acres in size. My first year of high school, half the kids were homeless due to it. The arsonist was caught starting yet another fire, and locked up in the nut house for the rest of his life. But those were primarily brush and forest fires. Way more unhealthy was the Santa Rosa fire and other suburban/woods interface fires the last few autumns, which rained down toxic burnt plastic and aluminum and oil ash. Talked to my sister in the Monterey area last night, and the smoke is considerably worse than even here along SF Bay. It varies almost hourly. At the moment, I've got a good breeze and mostly blue sky, but still smell smoke. There's another thunderstorm forecast this upcoming weekend, but hard to say if it will be anything remotely as weird as the last one. I'm accustomed to severe thunderstorms in the mountains; but not much burns above timberline. Lots of forest fires are human caused instead, and natural lightning fires were once more localized. But now just about anything can trigger a big one, with so much dry and dead tinder at mid-elevations, and so much suburban sprawl where is makes little sense in this respect.

  9. #19
    Angus Parker angusparker's Avatar
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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    I was at the South end of Dillon Beach a few days ago and got to see the mushroom cloud plumes of three fires while enjoying clean marine air. Kind of surreal. Sonoma Valley is really getting bad with 250 plus as the high count today. San Francisco at least the North part was between 50-100 so pretty manageable. Check out purpleair.com for better local air quality data than the government provides. The data comes from consumer grade sensors that cost about $200 but are surprisingly accurate. Happy to hear the deaths have been far fewer than the Santa Rosa fires of a few years ago that were devastating.

  10. #20

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    Re: Smoke smoke everywhere

    These are the best fire reports I can get in San Diego. Thank you, and please continue to keep us up to date. I have a sister in Eureka and children near Big Bend.

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