California FireStorm of 08: Going to Be HUGE !!

When you first get on the fire map zoom in to northern California. This will allow you to check the satellite thermal imaging sources. Turn off the current fire and current fire perimeter buttons to get the best view of the thermal satellite data.

[link to www.latimes.com]

I hope this is an OK link to post.....GOOD information

This is all so very critical to those firefighters. May they be safe.

also
don't remember if the OP posted this link....

[link to geomac.usgs.gov]

or

[link to www.nifc.gov]

PLEASE stay safe and be prepared.

Thanks for the great link!

Yep....and the fire season doesn't officially start until fall.

the war on weather will last billions of years

.

All right !! Finally got the BS Flag. What would a good informational thread with technical data to support it be a GLP without a BS Flag.

Maybe it was for the post about the weather wars lasting billions of years -- AC wasn't real specific who s/he was addressing with the BS flag.....

The thousand hour dead fuel moisture charts show northern California (indeed much of the west) are down in the 6 to 10% range. 1000 hr fuels represent the large dead woody fuels on the forest floor like logs and large branches. Large diameter dead woody material is the primary progenitor of very big forest fires and extreme fire behavior. Large amounts of dead fuels are present in most of our forests now due to a century of fire exclusion and suppression. The dryness of these fuels is currently at levels normally observed in late summer.

Current 1000 hr. dead fuel moisture chart for the US.
[link to www.fs.fed.us]

These fires are going to be unforgiving and historic in magnitude. A GLP prediction that will come true.

how many "natural" disasters are in fact terrorist attacks?

it seems odd to me that nothing has happened since 9/11, a person with a non descript car, that gets good gas mileage of course, and a box of road flares, with a modest level of intelligence, could torch hundreds of thousands of acres

Today was another day of choking smoke and a light rain of ash, the smoke seems to quite the air, just like snow will.

I am miles away from any of the many firestorms that burn around me, fires on nearly every side, but that is small solace when the north winds could pick up at any moment and really start the destruction.

I have lived unscathed from the Bear fire, the Jones fire, and others over the years, fires that have destroyed hundreds and hundreds of homes. You don't hear much about our casualties, unlike our famous southern California neighbors with their multi-million dollar homes, but we've suffered well enough from our summer scourge.

As the smoke lifted now and again, today, I could see the ever growing plumes of smoke in the steep western range, spots difficult to fight because the area is so rugged, then the smoke would drop back down and smother their outlines.

This storm system that sparked it all was unusual in the fact that it started early in the morning, which in our area, is different than how the usually form-in the afternoon.

The storm was unusually long lasting and seemed to stay put for a much longer time than usual. I saw very large bolts coming from the lighter outskirts of the storm, not deeper in as I would think. The edges of the storm were roiling and I took some images of amazing updrafts in the clouds.

[link to i280.photobucket.com]

Thankfully, I did not see much hail, which can be so devastating on gardens and fruit trees, but we did have good storm showers that I am sure helped quench some of the fires.

Our fire conditions at the head of the north valley are so dry, the meadows around me are 12" to 16" tall of dead, dry grass, with just a bit of green struggling through the thatch. Our lakes are low, and we failed to have our good spring showers to top off our annual rainfall levels.

Here is an image of how smokey it is:

[link to i280.photobucket.com]

Look how brown the sky is behind my sunflower, the sun could be viewed directly without harm to your eyes as it approached sunset.

[link to i280.photobucket.com]

I think it is going to be a long and perhaps tense summer.

the sun was red as it approached the horizon earlier

bump for tomorrow...red skies at night. Oh no.

Um no fire season starts when the last rains come through - that is usually in March - by late April early May temperatures are usually high enough to dry everything out so by June and the official start of summer we live in a tinderbox.

Mind the three days leading up to the storms of Saturday were hot - high 90's followed by 2 100F + days. And not just hot but also breezy sucking the moisture out of the grasses and rainy season growth.

The Storms were 'unusual' in that we rarely do get thunder and lightening - period. More unusual for the lateness in the year.

However this is not to say that this is impossible to take place or that it has never taken place in California before - it has and most likely will take place many more times in future.

Many of the valleys in California are desert naturally. We have a great irrigation system that brings in water to keep us growing crops. Without that it would be pretty sandy and dry with tumble weeds.

Coastal Valleys - like Napa Valley are naturally semi-wooded with prairie like conditions. Wet winters producing lots of grass growth, summer drying all of it out to hay and straw.

Fire is to California as high wind is to hurricanes.

Its just the way it is.

I live south of Sacramento in California...the smoke out here is horrible. We had dry lighting....never heard of it before today.

why isnt this pinned!!!! this is really bad :(

nice pic of that sunflower :)


KEEP US INFORMED!!!

all the animals, insects, birds that are dying and losing their homes now :(....so sad

Dam smokey here today too in North Bay SF. A fire in Napa is blowing our way but the fires up north are much bigger. News said 800 plus fires burning in state of California. So many fires that some are burning untended meaning that there are not enough firefighters so the fires are raging unchecked. Not good in June. September could be bad.

Bump for the day shift...watch the satellite thermal imaging data as the day warms up.

[link to www.geomac.gov]

wrong

fire season starts the end of May

and....

We have a stiff north wind today, this is the type of thing we dread during fire season.

It looks about 10-25 mph so far, but it can get up to 30-50 mph on some days.

It might clear the valley enough to get some better photos of the mountains set asmoke, but it is bad news for firefighters.

Here is the most recent Satellite image of smoke plumes over California. Major smoke plumes across the expanse of northern California.

[link to www.osei.noaa.gov]

The fires are blowing up this afternoon as seen on the satellite thermal imagery on the GeoMAC wildfire viewer. The fires are growing together rapidly as I said previously. Watch the satellite data this afternoon. This is going to be a big firestorm across the entire region...and it is just getting warmed up. These fires are going to burn until the snow flies.

[link to geomac.usgs.gov]

The other mountains are still shrouded in smoke, but this one cleared up enough to photograph.


[link to i280.photobucket.com]

Um ... What I said.

Going to go till the snow falls.

WoW.

Yes the fire season is with us and does not begin in the fall. The sky is considerably clearer today than all of this past week when daily we had intensely orange metallic looking sun that you could look at directly because of the obscuation due to the particulate and my home is full ove evidence of all of that with everything covered with it. Naturally we were very desert like and except for our great water delivery mechanisms would still be today and we did have about 11percent humidity a few days last week. We have also had northern winds which is not typical of thus time of the year and hugely drying but with respect to the "heat" lightning, the dry lightning people who lived in the Sacramento Valley were always used to this in past summers, it has only been over the more recent two decades that we have experience less of this but over the ridge of the Sierra Nevada mountains they always get summer thunderstorms. It is indeed most frightening and I for one rarely will leave my place for any length of time away due to this during the summer season.