Bad,Bad Fire Season going on!

[VE7DCW]

BC is going through one of the worst fire seasons we've seen in almost 50 years going along with the drought that has hammered the western part of North America.I woke up this morning with the skies obliterated in thick smoke from the Port Hardy fire on the north end of Vancouver Island that has only been burning the last couple of days! I tried to take some pictures with my cell phone camera to show you what it was like here outside the house,but my camera won't take the right pictures.....

Click on the link below and see the CBC news story about it from Vancouver with contributed photos from viewers who take accurate pictures of what it's like in the Vancouver area.We are a little worse shape smoke wise,but it is a blessing in one way,the smoke has blocked the sun lowering the air temperature 8 degrees Celsius.A far cry from the 30+ degrees Celsius record temperatures we have been suffering the last 10 days or so! (I suppose this demonstrates the effect of a nuclear winter in theory!) :shock:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/smoky-skies-from-wildfires-snapped-by-residents-in-vancouver-1.3138949

[VE7MGF]

but its a dry winter

[NQ6U]

I can relate to this.

[W2NAP]

step 1 get marshmallows
step 2 go to fire
step 3 ???????
step 4 profit

[VE7DCW]

but its a dry winter

.....but,but Surrey never has a dry summer! Mike.......the Surrey mayor keeps touting it as the promised land,that's if you don't mind dodging all the bullets! :mrgreen:

[K0RGR]

We're getting a lot of smoke from those fires here. Our normally blue sky looks overcast, but it's smoke.

It looks like our family camping spot in Alpine Co., CA got torched this year. Maps of the fire show it burning right up to the edge of the lakes we camp on, and
all the campgrounds down below that are ashes now. The damage will likely take a very long time to recover. There had not been a fire back there since I was a
small child, and it didn't get near the lakes, so there was a lot of burnable fuel for this fire - not good for trees. If a fire goes through quickly, the trees can survive.
They half ruined this some years ago when they paved the road to the lakes, but it was still an OK place to camp - just a lot more people now.

[VE7MGF]

there is a wet summer in surrey now just 2 shootings this weekend
really stinks of smoke in delta toay

[VE7DCW]

there is a wet summer in surrey now just 2 shootings this weekend
really stinks of smoke in delta toay


I agree..... the smoke is real bad here in Duncan and ash from the Port Hardy fire is falling like fine snow everywhere! You can literally smell the burning trees from up there.......sad really :(

[N8YX]

I hope the pine beetles and other tree pests lay low this year, else there could be a lot of dead wood to add to the problems.

[N7YA]

14094

[wa6mhz]

Its headed down here any day now! Sweating out the 2015 Firestorm season

[n2ize]

It reminds me a bit of the forest fires from Quebec that blanketed NY state from the Canadian border all the way down and beyond NYC in 2001 or 2002. I remember the bright sunny afternoon turning into a dark dismal evening , the sun a dark ruddy orange colour from the smoke as the plumes moved in.. At ground level the smoke was visible and it smelled like a campfire everywhere.

[VE7DCW]

The winds have shifted a tiny bit and is now coming in from the Pacific ocean and the fresh blast of marine air has cooled us off by about 4 degrees Celsius and cleared a bit of the smoke back into the interior of the province.......the beauty of all this wildfire stuff,if you can find a bit of beauty in any of this, is that the provincial political shit storm has gone has hot as the fires over lack of waterbomber support when they retired the mighty Martin Mars waterbombers 2 years ago! The Wild fire situation and Public screaming has now made them change their minds!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdiCsxM5Pg4 One of the neater Youtube videos I've seen on the Mars!......

Carl and Pat may even remember seeing this magnificent aircraft with those noisy Pratt and Whitney piston engines fighting the California wildfires 3 or 4 years back!

It's the best damn 70 year old technology plane I have ever seen in action! Saw it in action many times when I was a kid...... just plain awesome to have the house just rattle to death from the noise of the engines flying low after making a drop! :yes:

[NQ6U]

I don't recall seeing the Martin Mars around here, but I did see this one:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHz5kYv3unM

[K0RGR]

Cough, cough, cough... we had a weird condition yesterday that pulled the smoke down to ground level here. Visibility was down to two miles or less, it smelled like burning plastic, and people with respiratory problems were having issues. Now, this is in southeast Minnesota, folks, 1,000 miles from the fires in Saskatchewan?

This should demonstrate that the crap we put into the air really does affect people a long way off!

[n0km]

We sometimes get smoke from the fires in Southern Calif, over a thousand miles west of us here in Colorado.

[NQ6U]

I'm surprised by that. More often than not we get the big burns when the Santa Ana winds are blowing. Since they're created by a high pressure system sitting over the Great Basin, they are an easterly wind and they blow the smoke plumes out over the Pacific.

[PA5COR]

Alaska had 300+ fires raging, California lots of fires etc.
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php#

[K0RGR]

I went and took a look at the GOES WX satellite images. Smoke from fires in the Sierras does indeed end up in Colorado, and eventually, here, where it joins with smoke from the fires in Saskatchewan. Actually, it looks like Colorado gets it from both places, too... SK is northwest of CO, too, so the prevailing winds are in that direction.

It's really pretty impressive. Makes all those stories about nuclear winter seem more plausible, and makes me wonder what it was like after Krakatoa exploded - allegedly, the ash cloud made it around the world more than once. It is a small, fragile blue marble in space after all.

[N7YA]

We were getting the smoke from those Cali fires a couple of weeks ago here in the Vegas valley. Its Monsoon season starting up, we had some big showers yesterday. Lightning strikes always cause a little trouble in the hills around here.

For your viewing pleasure, heres what a fire drop looks like from inside the cockpit.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro9oJvDlAjc

[N8XE]

That smoke is making its way even into Ohio. Our sunny days have normally been hazier than normal this year (add to that we have been getting a bunch of rain). One day, the sun had an interesting color to it at midday. It was orange with evening like colors cast on everything.

Jason N8XE

[kb2vxa]

Smoke can travel a LONG way before dissipating. Here are the plumes from Southern California 10-23-07 courtesy of NASA. Every so often we get some wicked ones here in the Pine Barrens, those pitch pines go up like matches... POOF! They've been known to sweep through residential neighborhoods too, I get the news before the media on my scanner.

[KG4NEL]

That's just Dre and Snoop's normal output from those regions.