Cold front moved thru yesterday with lots of cloud and a tiny amount of rain. Still clouds this morning and cooler. 6Ofs here this morning but low 40Fs in N Wisconsin./// 39F in International Falls, MN. Some very cool air behind this front.
Iāve been watching this closely since my dad lives in the area. Over 600 homes lost, mostly in one day when high winds drove the fire right into the outskirts of the city. Has to be the worst disaster the city has seen in my lifetime. The Old Trails fire passed within a few blocks of a duplex I used to live in, and the Autumn Lane fire also passed within a couple blocks of a house I lived in in the Suncrest area. It burned right up to the high school I went to.
Stay safe! The firefighting crews seem to be getting a handle on things, but itās supposed to heat up again over the next few days.
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For me, we had good rain in June but a very dry July (0.2ā for the month) which is fairly normal here. August is also looking very dry into the foreseeable future. The last time we got more than a quarter inch of rain was about 8 weeks ago now. Still feels like ānormal midsummerā levels of dry, not like the scary bone-dry conditions they have down in Washington and the parts of BC just east of the Coast Mountains. Temps have been above average, but no record-breaking heatwaves. My plants and trees all look quite happy. The long term forecast is starting to hint at a pattern change that could bring rainā¦ fingers crossed.
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im praying for all you folks living through those fires out west. at least here we are surrounded by lots of water. even a bad drought here pales in comparison to what the west deals with. in my 55 yrs. ive never heard of a forest fire in Maine thats burned more than a doz. acres in the last 100 yrs.. hazy hot and humid here all week. some showers towards the end. typical august weather.
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I saw some before and after video of homes out there that got consumed by the fire and it looked really bad. Will they allow those homes to be rebuilt? I wonder how long something like that takes? Sad. Imagine all your stuff just turning to ash.
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from the Cali fires only a few years ago, it took years just to get the money then the permits. alot of them never returned to the burn areas because of this. after this fire season, i dont know if you could afford or even find someone to insure your home after such a loss from the insurance companies. millionares will probably sweep in and buy it all up because they can afford it. very sad.
I didnāt think about the insurance side of it. I bet insurance was already very expensive. Iāve heard of people in Florida just not even having insurance because the premiums are so high (those with no mortgages).
When my brother was up in Ontario he said that the cabin they stayed at if you walked behind it you couldnāt walk 25 yards into the forest because of all the down timber/branches/etc. He said it wouldnāt take anything for the whole place to burn up.
It doesnāt seem to me like the neighborhoods that lost homes were in especially bad locations; that is to say, there are lots of other areas around the edges of Spokane that are probably similarly vulnerable to fire, especially on the west side of the city since the wind usually comes from that direction. The paths the fires took look to be mainly due to the ignition location and wind direction. Iām guessing most of the destroyed homes will be rebuilt eventually. The roads and buried infrastructure has to be too valuable to not use.
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the northern Boreal forests also have vast dry peat bogs under them. once a fire gets going in them, they can burn for decades under ground. its happened on a smaller scale here. whole sections of forest had to be cut then the peat dug to put out the fire. happened from a lightning strike in the Haynesville bog about 5 yrs ago just s.e of here.
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one thing ive noticed in these communities is the amount of large evergreen trees growing around these homes. those things are like gasoline igniting when theyre dry and really put out a huge burst of heat/ cinders and burn very quickly. if i lived there i would not have one on my property within 100yrs. 200 being better, of the house or any out buildings. even better just plant deciduous. all big flare ups caught on camera is a evergreen or a bunch of them blowing up in flames.
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Saturday has high fire risk in the city itself again. no rain on the forecast, itās August. but the wind is the last thing we need right now
edit to add: some of the places that burned were in city limits, the tree canopy isnāt that solid or anything. the outlying areas are high desert pine forest and burn naturally, but this was in town, partially, in places that do not have the kind of tree cover youād maybe think of.
youāre talking about āraking up deadfallā on city streets. half a million people live in the city alone, not counting the county outside. all around the city is burning still. the city itself was burning.
i will stop myself before i start ranting about snowpack, water/soil load, the low river, aquifers, managed burns (which we do) etc etc
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Such an incredibly hot summer. Hope this will not happen next year. Just left Italy, same weather but steamy. Day after I left there were two earthquakes where I flew out of. Hmmmmm.
That makes sense. The water/power/sewer are there so you wouldnāt have to run that stuff//anything that was buried.
Sometimes they will burn some of the prairie here just for regeneration==get rid of weeds. I do know of a guy who was burning his leaves in the fall that burnt down his house but that was just user error.
Upper 50Fs overnight. Didnāt tap into the really cool air here. Dew points were lower yesterday which helped. Looks like a bunch of chances of rain over the next week. Fri/Sun/Mon/Tues and so on. Should help keep the temps in check.
The big old orange-barked ponderosa pines around town are really part of Spokaneās character so I can understand why they stay. But I think youāre right in general. Not only the trees themselves, but their needle litter is very flammable and takes a long time to decompose. They are a fire adapted species and rely on frequent low intensity fires. What I think really needs to be done is more controlled burning of the low fuels in forested areas nearby that donāt get raked. My dad does controlled burns every few years on his property (in springtime, when itās safe) as a fire safety measure. That being said, when the wind is strong enough fire behaviour can reach a stage where thereās nothing you can do and thatās what happened last weekend.
I cringe when I see houses in my area surrounded by dense cedars. Thatās pretty much guaranteeing the house gets lost in a forest fire. Everyone in the west should consider that fire will approach their house sometime in the futureā¦ itās a question of when, not if.
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my property is ringed with old evergreens but im surrounded by fields so a fire would have a hard time getting to me and i also keep any branches 6ft. from the ground so if the field did catch fire, it would be very unlikely to reach the canopy. that with the amount of water and rain we get, its probably overkill anyway. these trees are also at least 75yrs from the house and garage. if they did burn id only lose a shed.