Four of the headlines on the front page of our local paper yesterday were:
Drought continues to expand across American Southwest
Stage 1 fire restrictions hit SF National Forest
Forest Service crews train for upcoming fire season
Crews put out fire near ice rink
(The fire near the ice rink was caused by arcing power lines and was put out within an hour.)
June is usually our worst month for wildfires, but we’ve had a very dry winter so the fire danger is already high.
But it’s not as bad as Oklahoma. This video was from last night:
tammy said she had trouble keeping smoke out of her apartment last night because she was downwind of the fires. Fingers crossed!
April 14, 2018
wow. i hadn’t seen this clip. i quit watching when all the cattle were killed.
and that was only one ranch. they’re all over out there.
that guy on the big grader almost didn’t make it. thank goodness the storm chasers were there and rescued him.
i didn’t even know we had made national news.
we’re such a small state that it wouldn’t take much to burn us up.
i heard yesterday that if a fire is big enough it creates its own weather conditions. now with it starting up in other strategic places it could be very bad indeed.
I think it was a good idea to stop watching when it became too upsetting. I just looked at the wind map and the worst seems to be to your north and west. Hot, dry and windy is a recipe for disaster in drought areas.
Tammy assured me she had a go bag packed and ready. I sure hope she doesn’t have to use it, though.
I’ve been assuming she will be safe. We had to evacuate twice here, once in 2000, then again in 2011, and we had plenty of warning. Before parts of Santa Rosa in California burned I had assumed living in a city was fairly safe. No part of our town burned in 2011 (unlike our land, which was completely torched), and only houses on the urban-forest burned in the 2000 fire. I hope I’m right!
One of my friend decide to adventure to southwest to live. I talk to her and she in Arizona but last time I talk to her, She mention nothing of smoke or fire.
Coffee is on
Hopefully that continues for her.
My best wishes that you, Andy and Tammy stay safe and that your property does not get damaged. Here, it is climbing temperatures but no danger of fires.
Thank you.
It’s amazing that it is so dry not that far away from us. We had the wind for several days and then it rained again a couple of days after we had some earthwork done, which had been delayed to let the ground dry out a bit. Fortunately, there isn’t any more rain predicted until after our new septic system lateral lines are installed later this week.
In July 1986, our rural fire department fought a wildfire in winds like that. All we could do do was attack the edges. Fortunately, the wind died down fairly soon and the fire didn’t expand too much. However, I think it had a lot more acreage than any other fire we had. One winter we fought a house fire when the wind was high like that and were lucky nothing else caught on fire.
Unfortunately with big fires all you can try to do is keep it from growing and wait for the weather to change. We could use some of your rain!
Oh God.
I’ve refrained from Googling it and now to see it!
I’m usually worried about Tammy and tornadoes!
This is terrifying!
I wish she and the Marine would move some place further up North!
And you and Andy too!
xoxoxo
Andy and I are fine down here, but he has only one exit now so is trying to make a large defensible space around the house in case a fire comes and he’s up there and can’t get out.
I would be a lot more worried about tammy if her brother weren’t there.
sad, sad, sad…
life is so vulnerable to the weather – we’ve had our own problems here in the big city in the last week…and still pockets of region completely off-power, whereas having no el-for hot water elements etc – just inconvenient…
we get to love those invisible conveniences provided by city/council/companies and when they don’t “fire up” we realise our vulnerability…
Yes, we do get spoiled!