Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Oh Joy Fire Season Has Started

My eyes were burning this afternoon and I couldn't figure out why. This picture was taken on Monday afternoon around 3:45pm and shows the reduced visibility from the first wildfire of the season. At 1:30pm, it was still clear so it has just started. Supposedly it's pretty modest but that doesn't really lessen the impact. I didn't smell any smoke so I had not expected to see evidence of a fire especially this early in the season.

There was also a "controlled burn" at the Creamer's Field Wildlife Refuge today. i wasn't looking forward to that as it is the greenspace to the southwest of our house. 

12 comments:

  1. I just looked at NOAA to see your humidity. You have a Red Flag warning, but I thought 68% humidity was pretty good...apparently not. I only took one semester of weather science in college.

    Looks like nice temperatures for you and maybe some rain later. I hope you get that rain.

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    1. Interior Alaska has a pretty arid climate and whenever the snow is gone, it's fire season. The black spruce we have is a wonderful fire starter, almost as good as birch bark which we also have. We have multi-year fires where it smolders underground to flare up the next year.

      It's raining this morning but barely enough to wet the road.

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    2. I always used birch bark to start my wood fires. Burns just like grease. Fascinating about your smoldering fires underground.

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  2. Already? And summer hasn't even started. Even if they are (at least partly) controlled burns, the smell makes me want to run away in a different direction.

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    1. This does seem to be an ominous start to the summer and I hope it isn't a harbinger of what the rest of the spring/summer is going to be like. They do controlled burns at Creamer's Field almost every year. What better way to welcome Spring...

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  3. Richard:

    a few years ago there was a big fire in the Stein Valley and you could smell the smoke all the way to the Fraser Canyon. I was riding in it for an hour or so and then when I got to Kelowna my gear all smelt like smoke

    Hard to believe your snow just melted and now you are into fire season

    bob
    A weekend photographer or Riding the Wet Coast


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    1. I remember going around numerous fires in Alaska, B.C., Washington and Oregon on our trips between Alaska and the "Lower-48". For a couple of years, it was just about every trip for a while.

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  4. Ruh roh, seems early for fire season. I hear tell it will be a bad one in CA too. Hopefully Eastern Oregon won't be too bad.

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    1. I think it may be early but they have been predicting that this was going to be a bad year.

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  5. http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130818/underground-fire-burning-remote-alaska-raises-concerns-about-toxic-gas

    Interesting article!

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  6. We rode down through Washington and Oregon last summer and the fires were everywhere. The smoke was so thick around Crater Lake that it was like acrid fog. We stopped to take some photos of Mt Hood on our way back up and I saw something strange in my rear view mirror, when I turned around I was looking at a pillar of fire that shot up about 30 feet in the air about a mile back up the road. A small blaze had found something to take hold in and was belching out black smoke and flames that were reaching for the sky near some homes. We could stand there are see at least three separate major fire plumes in different directions.

    https://flic.kr/p/fqiC9k

    The dry winter we have had around these parts of BC doesn't bode well for this year here either.

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    1. It seems like there are frequently fired in eastern Oregon and Washington. Actually B.C. as well. It seems like on just about every trip out there are fires somewhere. I guess that's just the way things go. Pretty grim to ride through. Beautiful photos on your Flickr feed! Thank you for stopping by and commenting.

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