Contributors to this thread:
'Ike' (Phone)'s Link
Starting to get interesting out there…New ones starting every day and others blowing up in size!
I'm NE of Missoula at the moment. A bunch of lightening fires started on the 7th. It's been hot and smokey. I was out yesterday doing some recon in the mountains. The haze made the photos cloudy.
All the haze blocked my view of the Bighorns today... and nearly blocked out the sun after 7 p.m.
It's killing my breathing up scouting/hiking in the mornings!!!
Blow my nose and it's that brownish color like I've been tilling in the garden dust.
I'm seriously thinking about wearing one of my C-19 Legendary Whitetails masks when I'm hiking/scouting
Good luck, Robb
Hope all of you out that way stay safe.
Robb, we spent a couple days in Mt Pleasant and couldn’t see the mountains. A shame, it’s a beautiful spot.
Stay safe out there folks. Maybe the patterns will shift and you guys will start getting some rain. Wish we could ship it from the North East, we could use a break after the past month or so!
Same from here in the SE. wish we could ship you some moisture!!!
15 days so far this year with eight straight days of 100+ here in Reno with humidity in the single digits or teens. If it’s not 100 it’s been above 95 most days since early June. Hottest summer on record throughout the west on I bet. Fires are popping up nearly daily around town, thankfully most are being put out quickly but the biggest fire in the US, the Beckwourth Complex, is 20 miles north. I drove from Reno to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and back the past two weeks and was driving through smoke through most of northern CA and southern OR in both directions from other fires.
It’s going to be a another rough year in the west. Here’s a quote from the local paper:
Fire Behavioral Analyst Diondray Wiley, who is also working on the Beckwourth Complex Fire, said the conditions are ideal for large scale fires.
"We are six weeks ahead of where we would normally be," he said of dry conditions usually not seen until August and September.
Very dry with +300 fires in BC. Lytton, a town in the interior at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson River set the new all time Canadian high temperature record 3 days in a row in early July, topping out at over 121*F two weeks ago. On the forth day the entire town burned down, cause of fire yet to be determined.
Lots of smoke in the air....mornings are the clearest with visibility of a few miles, then it deteriorates over the course of the day. No rain in the 10-day forecast for relief either. At least locally it is now topping out at 100*F versus our high at the house of 115* during the heat wave.
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/
Sorry the Smoke and Heat! messed with your visit Jim.
I went up to the ski resort (Snowbasin) to hike yesterday and it is thicker or so it seems the higher I hike.
Good luck, Robb
It’s bad in my part of Montana and only going to get worse. Pray for rain please!! Hunt
Hope all you guys get some major relief, soon!
Rain, what’s rain…Dismal at best!
'Ike' (Phone)'s Link
So they watched it for 13 days…Now it’s a problem!
I am surprised there was enough fuel in that area for the Tamarack fire to go like that.
Well, it found something to burn…
'Ike' (Phone)'s Link
Found something to burn in Nevada now also…SMH
National Forest is currently closed where I hunt in CO due to a fire.
I just got home from my hiking/scouting trip in Wyoming unit 4 Mnt. Goat/unit 73 elk overlap and the smoke was terrible!
Good luck, Robb
Smoke from the Tamarack fire last Thursday as seen from my boat on Lake Tahoe. This was right when it blew up and crossed the border into Nevada.
When we flew back east from Montana earlier this week, we stopped in Minn-St Paul to switch planes. The smoke was real bad there. Someone said there was a fire in Manitoba and the north winds pushed the smoke and debris into Minnesota. The irony.....as I type we're in a flash flood warning right now in northern MI.
JL seems like we’ve been in flash flood every time it rains here in Mass. we got 3.8” in town last Saturday and it only rained for about 1.5 hours. Never seen it rain so hard so long. Wish we coulda sent it all out west
If Robb thinks the picture he posted shows "terrible" smoke, he is mistaken. BC is way worse most days over the past month...dependent on wind direction.
Air quality in Reno is pretty bad right now. That said breathing smoke is a minor inconvenience for healthy people and I’ve got two friends who lost cabins the last two weeks. One in the Beckworth Complex the others in the Tamarack Fire. I’d rather breath bad air than lose property.
We've been under a smoke canopy for over 2 weeks now in Idaho, with no relief expected any time soon.
Believe it or not, Monteleucast allergy meds help me take the edge off, but my wife is miserable from it.
If anyone is headed out of state the Air Now website has a good interactive map feature so you’ll have an idea of how bad the smoke might be.
Up at camp in PA. Allegheny river is running at 18000 CFM. Normal summer level is 4000. Wish we could send some water out west!
Rick that’s crazy! The Susquehanna is running crazy too!
At camp now, just came in from speed fishing the high water. Raining again.
We are getting smoke all the way to the East coast. Hope it rains and no lightning!
Pulled the air filter out of my Powerstroke the other day. After 5 days in Sparks, a couple in Carson City, it was black with soot.
Could smell smoke here in central Mass. today. Hazy all day. We've had a wet July here, wish we could send some of it west. Been cleaning my (flooded) basement after a beaver dam busted up the hill from me. Second time this year...
Dana the haze was crazy in Fitchburg today. Could only see a fraction the distance into the hills as I usually can. Could smell it too. Hopefully they get some rain out there to help put these fires out!
Pretty sure we only have a few hundred left burning in MB after a little rain last week. Many many uncontrolled.
Amazing the smoke is making it all the way to the East Coast! Last week our local weather guy was talking about it on the news............and you could see it and SMELL it in the air!
Pretty crazy JetStream this year…
Perry it’s Crazy. Northeast PA my buddy said you could damn near taste it. Just south of Binghamton NY
Your September outlook…Sucks!
A young woman I know was touring on her motorcycle out west. The smoke caused her an asthma attack and she died. Really hoping the weather turns wet for you out there.
We got some great rains last night in southwest MT. Should help. More in the forecast.
yah well that's just a part of living out here I suppose. Fires, grizz, winter for 7 months, etc......a person either gets used to it or moves on.
Just mother-nature taking care of what we can't manage ourselves...Either that, or she see's what a mess we've made and just threw her hands up! Lol
We’re getting hammered in the South with rain. Wish I could sent all of it out West for the next couple of months. We don’t need anymore. Seems like it’s all or nothing depending on what part of the country you’re in.
Riding motorcycles in idaho is dangerous now. Most small creeks have dried up. So dry the deer are crossing roads all day to get to the rivers. Seeing lots of mid day accidents.
One of my cousins, in Montana, says the fires are really but grasshoppers have eaten the hay, grass and even leaves off the trees. He said they are selling their cows because they can't get enough to eat. My cousin is a cowboy and makes his living on a horse working cows. He said Sevin is the only thing that saves his garden from swarms of grasshoppers.
NorCal looking a lil rough…
Isn't there something in the Bible about fire and grasshoppers? Maybe it's locusts? Either way not a good combination if I remember my Sunday school.
That satellite photo really gives some prospective.
DanaC's Link
I sure hope nobody is from Greenville CA
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-58123369
Very hazy in the San Luis Valley against the mountains this week. No fires. Not sure where it’s coming from
They are giving Health Warnings on the News here now about exercising in this thick smoke lung damage.
Screwing with my daily hiking/training.
Good luck, Robb
Up here on the NH/Quebec border, we can not only see the haze, but also smell the smoke at higher elevation. Two days ago, I was cutting up on a mountain in the Parmachenee of Maine and it was hot, hazy, and smelled of wood smoke.
Central NV only looks good in Ike’s picture because there are no smoke monitors in that region…..
RMEF’s magazine “Bugle” July/August edition has a real good article on the impact of fire on wildlife on page 110.
Yeah, mostly blowing East Tiz…
Zion National Park was very hazy yesterday. The campground I was in banned campfires due to poor air quality. It appeared visibility was ~1/2 to 1 mile.
'Ike' (Phone)'s Link
Arson…Just execute him! SMH
Just read that there are fires going in Siberia that are bigger than we're dealing with in NA. Smoky to the North Pole.
The Richard Spring fire has burnt 175k acres in 4 days of existence! Montana has had somewhere around 250k acres burn this week!
The view from my living room on a good (normal) day at 8:00 AM. Notice the shadow of the house from the sun?
The air quality we’ve been dealing with about 90% of the time for the past month. The AQI at the time was about 150 and it’s been as bad as 500+ but averaging around 200. Picture was taken about the same time of day has the other one. It’s starting to piss me off… It’s definitely impacting my ability train for this year’s hunts. That said smoke will pass and it does appear the Dixie fire has slowed down. Let’s hope there aren’t more but I do know SoCal and the NorCal coastal areas are typically hardest hit in August - October so it ain’t over yet.
'Ike' (Phone)'s Link
Ours just went to hell with the new fire that sparked just East of me…This fire (Caldor) has blown up, with no containment!
Thanks to groups like Sierra club that file lawsuits to stop logging on federal land this is what we get. Then after the fires over they will file suits to stop them from cutting down dead trees. Rotting trees create tons of methane gas that these same groups say is causing climate change, aka global warming, ice age etc.
It's been pouring rain here/snow in the high country
BUT
This early AM, the smoke is back and they are giving out the dreaded breathing warnings to stay indoors!
I hate walking indoors @ the gym on the indoor track.......
Dang it,
Robb
We're getting much needed moisture in SW MT. Last two days have been 50 degrees and raining off/on day and night. Supposed to go through the weekend. Should really put a dent in the fires burning here.
DL I get a charge out of people who protest logging because 'trees sequester carbon.' Well, goobers, so do buildings made of wood! The carbon in the beams of this old house has been 'sequestered for 139 years!
For the last few days, I could barely see the Ruby Mtrs. That are maybe 1.5 miles away as the crow flies from me. Cough a lot and the allergies are rolling code 3. We should be able to lock those Sierra Club pansies in a smoke filled barn for a month then “welcome to my world, idiots!” Maybe then we can start logging off those beetle killed trees, knock down the fuel load.
BULELK1's Link
Lake Tahoe
Just crazy,
Robb
Dixie Fire blew up today, is over 800,000 acres and has burned 50,000 new acres to the east and is headed toward Portola CA. Smoke is now visible from Reno from 30 miles away. Caldor Fire is approaching 200,000 acres and will surely exceed that today. 93 degrees with 5% humidity and 20 MPH winds today. No rain in the forecast for at least 10 days.
I can’t imagine the struggles of the fire fighters, evacuees and those who’ve lost their homes and property.