California is Burning (Again)

I'm working outside in the center of that black hole.

telemike. I guess you're not doing an Ironman, or else they would have cancelled it. It's really quite hazardous. Are they giving you any PPE or anything? Maybe it will be better if you start early in the morning.

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sto//21481_cloop.gif

A little smoke don't bother me.

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Originally Posted by telemike

A little smoke don't bother me.

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Dude, PM-2.5 is among the most hazardous inhalants.

See my post from this morning.

http://www.capradio.org/news/insight/

Seriously, do you know how much smoke I (and quite a few others here) have eaten over the years. It actually wasn't too bad today, despite the forecast. Thanks though.

most schools in western nevada county are closed tomorrow (Tuesday) due to smoke.

very relevant: http://www.sierranevada.ca.gov/our-w...-of-the-sierra

A somber paper relative to what is happening now.

Last nights evening news had a grim forecast for the coming days. Thoughts are with everyone out there, be safe.

Reposting the link from MS early in the thread cause it's a pretty good source.

http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/4108/

Sounds like they have they have all the significant spot fires NE of the main event taken care of which is good.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

very relevant: http://www.sierranevada.ca.gov/our-w...-of-the-sierra

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Turns out loggers and foresters can take care of the bush better than hippies and lawyers. Alert the media.

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Originally Posted by farmer

Turns out loggers and foresters can take care of the bush better than hippies and lawyers. Alert the media.

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That's not what it says. HTH. Not that what you think it says is wrong, but your agenda is showing.

Unfortunately the loggers and foresters and hippies and lawyers are all being put down by The Man.

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Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper

That's not what it says. HTH. Not that what you think it says is wrong, but your agenda is showing.

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It says that the forests are overgrown and unhealthy. Selective logging, and removal / burning of slash can effectively fix this.

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Originally Posted by farmer

Turns out loggers and foresters can take care of the bush better than hippies and lawyers. Alert the media.

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The report actually says "science-based ecological restoration of our Sierra Nevada forests must be dramatically increased." Sounds pretty hippy to me.

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Originally Posted by farmer

It says that the forests are overgrown and unhealthy. Selective logging, and removal / burning of slash can effectively fix this.

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I'm a hippy tree cutter and I agree sort of.

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Originally Posted by lepistoir

The report actually says "science-based ecological restoration of our Sierra Nevada forests must be dramatically increased." Sounds pretty hippy to me.

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That is because if you tell Californians that you need to log or their pretty little yuppie cabins will burn and people will die, they will still sue you. What needs to happen is fuel reduction, through a mix of logging and prescribed burns. The public land (mis) managed by the USFS is supposed to be a working forest. Not a neglected pile of firewood as the Sue-erra club would like.

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Originally Posted by farmer

It says that the forests are overgrown and unhealthy. Selective logging, and removal / burning of slash can effectively fix this.

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It doesn't say that either. Selective logging and removal/burning slash is part of a multi-layered approach, including prescribed and managed fire along with landscape restoration. Applied and managed fire is, IMO, much more effective than logging, if for no other reasons than you don't need roads to do it and it can be applied to much larger areas than logging. And the real fuel issue comes from unmarketable vegetation - reproduction, shitty fir, brush, etc. - not loggable trees.

Edit to add: and people - throw the people out of the woods, problem solved.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

today's smoke. darkest: "hazardous". next darkest: "very unhealthy"

http://yubanet.com/uploads/6/0922air10am.jpg

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Got a link to that smoke map? Bad again last night and this morning. Probably same today and tomorrow. Incoming Wx system should help.

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Originally Posted by telemike

Unfortunately the loggers and foresters and hippies and lawyers are all being put down by The Man.

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#threadwin

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Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper

Edit to add: and people - throw the people out of the woods, problem solved.

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Woo-eee!

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Originally Posted by telemike

Got a link to that smoke map? Bad again last night and this morning. Probably same today and tomorrow. Incoming Wx system should help.

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Red flag warnings from the frontal south winds? This system will not help.

Mike, I'm pulling my air quality maps from yubanet

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Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper

You hint at this, but planning projects is one thing, funding projects is quite another. Currently the money to pay for suppression comes from federal agencies' programmed money ('hard' dollars), and when the programmed fire funds run out, they have to take money out of the other areas - including forest health treatments and recreations, etc. - to pay for fire. And suppression costs keep going up annually in this era of common megafires, so the federal agencies have had to postpone and cancel forest health projects to pay for suppression.

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quoting this to point out that sierra nevada conservancy is a State grant funding agency.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

quoting this to point out that sierra nevada conservancy is a State grant funding agency.

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I saw that, which is why I specified fed agencies in my reply. The King fire is on fed land. Not too many projects on fed land get funded with state money grants.

^^ i hear ya. some fed agencies cannot fund wildfire mitigation on fed lands, too.

Are there any decent smoke forecasts for this weekend? I might need to head down to Mammoth to get away, which sucks because I love Fall in Tahoe.

A couple shots from 431 and Incline yesterday:

https://www.tetongravity.com/images/...2_n__forum.jpg

https://www.tetongravity.com/images/...6_n__forum.jpg

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Originally Posted by telemike

Got a link to that smoke map? Bad again last night and this morning. Probably same today and tomorrow. Incoming Wx system should help.

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http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?acti...yid=327#tabs-1

eta: good current data here: http://mobile.arb.ca.gov/breathewell/CityList.aspx

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Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper

I saw that, which is why I specified fed agencies in my reply. The King fire is on fed land. Not too many projects on fed land get funded with state money grants.

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Not just federal. There's a lot of private land back there as well (CalFire responsibility).

http://www.firepreventionfee.org/sraviewer.php

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Originally Posted by teledad

Not just federal. There's a lot of private land back there as well (CalFire responsibility).

http://www.firepreventionfee.org/sraviewer.php

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Well yeah, I should have said that far and away the bulk of the land involved in the King fire - and needing mitigation and health treatments - is federal. I was talking about funding forest health and mitigation on national forests. There are scattered inholdings, but the ratio of landowner acreage is pretty lopsided.

Smoke has been pretty much a non issue in SW Lake Tahoe basin (Meyers, Freel Pk and west) since fire started a week ago. A couple of afternoon and morning periods with enough smoke to make you not want to recreate outside. Some of those online smoke pattern maps have had no connection to reality.

what adds some interesting complexity is that many of the watersheds in the western sierra include reservoirs, with the land of the impounded water often owned by local water agencies. Those agencies work within some sort of coordination capacity with USFS. Many of those agencies have been publicly discussing forest health in their watershed, speaking the same language as that Sierra NV Conservancy report. The current water bond on the state ballet includes $$ for "watershed" management. Also, the sierra nv conservancy often gives grants related to water and water issues.

the current winds that are resulting in red-flag warnings in the northern sierra have given a reprieve in my neck of the woods from the smoke. finally!

Is it remotely possible to remove or control-burn brush in any significant percentage of California's (or any other state's) forests? I understand getting rid of the ladder fuels on the forest edges near civilization, which will keep low intensity fires from reaching the houses, but when a big crown fire gets going doesn't it just spread from crown to crown, brush or no brush? While it would be lovely to return the forest to it's pre Columbian state--old growth with widely spaced trees (covered wagons used to be able to pass between them) with a floor of grass that stays green all summer--it seems like we've passed a point of no return. Too much brush and small trees to remove, except by big fires that kill all the trees, and too many houses in the way. Just asking--I don't claim to know.

Anyone been up Mt Lola way? Looking at the NWS prediction looks like the smoke alert doesn't go that far north. I was thinking of hiking up there tomorrow (oops, looks like I mean later today.) Don't know why I'm worried about the smoke--between 4 or 5 summers working in the coal-handling department of a steel mill without any dust protection (our job was to turn coal into coal dust and burn it in the coke ovens) and decades of wood working without dust collection or a respirator, my lungs are already fucked.

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Originally Posted by old goat

Is it remotely possible to remove or control-burn brush in any significant percentage of California's (or any other state's) forests? I understand getting rid of the ladder fuels on the forest edges near civilization, which will keep low intensity fires from reaching the houses, but when a big crown fire gets going doesn't it just spread from crown to crown, brush or no brush? While it would be lovely to return the forest to it's pre Columbian state--old growth with widely spaced trees (covered wagons used to be able to pass between them) with a floor of grass that stays green all summer--it seems like we've passed a point of no return. Too much brush and small trees to remove, except by big fires that kill all the trees, and too many houses in the way. Just asking--I don't claim to know.

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You're on to one of the major problems facing California (and other) forests. The fuel (brush and little reproduction trees) accumulation is so thick in some places that you can't really burn it in place without damaging the large trees that you want to save. But it can be cut, piled, and burned...for a lot of $$$, which doesn't seem to exist.

Crown fires need ground fuel and ladder fuel to make a sustained run. You can get flares up without those, but it won't go far without them.

But I think you're right in that we've reached a point of no return in some areas - there isn't the $$$ or political/social will to treat forests to return them to a pre-Columbian state. That, and some forests (like spruce, lodgepole, and chaparral) will always burn catastrophically - they aren't the type for those legendary mellow underburns. In fact, those legendary, mellow underburns are pretty much common only in Ponderosa/Jeffrey forests and some open savannah-types like piñon/juniper that gets burned on a fairly regular basis. Aspen stands, Douglas-fir stands, and spruce forests are generally the result of stand-replacement fires or some similar wide=spread disturbance. (I'm pre coffee right now, so I may be forgetting some critical issues/forest types)

Dr. Stepen Pyne, the eminent fire social scientist (very worth reading if you're interested) has been saying that we aren't going to "win the war" with fire, but that we're going to have to learn how to live with it. I think he's probably right.

^^^ Good insight.

Just saw this linked on yubanet:

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Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper

You're on to one of the major problems facing California (and other) forests. The fuel (brush and little reproduction trees) accumulation is so thick in some places that you can't really burn it in place without damaging the large trees that you want to save. But it can be cut, piled, and burned...for a lot of $$$, which doesn't seem to exist.

Crown fires need ground fuel and ladder fuel to make a sustained run. You can get flares up without those, but it won't go far without them.

But I think you're right in that we've reached a point of no return in some areas - there isn't the $$$ or political/social will to treat forests to return them to a pre-Columbian state. That, and some forests (like spruce, lodgepole, and chaparral) will always burn catastrophically - they aren't the type for those legendary mellow underburns. In fact, those legendary, mellow underburns are pretty much common only in Ponderosa/Jeffrey forests and some open savannah-types like piñon/juniper that gets burned on a fairly regular basis. Aspen stands, Douglas-fir stands, and spruce forests are generally the result of stand-replacement fires or some similar wide=spread disturbance. (I'm pre coffee right now, so I may be forgetting some critical issues/forest types)

Dr. Stepen Pyne, the eminent fire social scientist (very worth reading if you're interested) has been saying that we aren't going to "win the war" with fire, but that we're going to have to learn how to live with it. I think he's probably right.

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This is why I don't understand why we continue to put fires out in Wilderness Areas. Not only should these places be left alone, there is no way to treat them, and every year of firefighting there just makes the problem worse. So why in the hell are high risk operations to insert firefighters still occurring? Just enough political will to put out the big bad fire, but not enough to actually address the problems? And further, all that is occurring is pushing the catastrophic fire off to another day anyways despite the millions spent to put fires out. I understands that some wilderness is small, or watersheds are threatened, but it doesn't matter, some day it will burn and we are just making it worse.

Edit- I know this is changing in lots of places and California is an entirely different ball game wrt people, WUI and politics. Still gets me fired up though.

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Originally Posted by char

This is why I don't understand why we continue to put fires out in Wilderness Areas. Not only should these places be left alone, there is no way to treat them, and every year of firefighting there just makes the problem worse. So why in the hell are high risk operations to insert firefighters still occurring? Just enough political will to put out the big bad fire, but not enough to actually address the problems? And further, all that is occurring is pushing the catastrophic fire off to another day anyways despite the millions spent to put fires out. I understands that some wilderness is small, or watersheds are threatened, but it doesn't matter, some day it will burn and we are just making it worse.

Edit- I know this is changing in lots of places and California is an entirely different ball game wrt people, WUI and politics. Still gets me fired up though.

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The video above is the reason.

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Originally Posted by DasBlunt

The video above is the reason.

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King fire is in a wilderness area?

http://m.onearth.org/article/forest-...olicy-reversal

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So does this mean, I asked him, that the keystone of wildfire science and policy for nearly two decades is a first casualty of global warming?

"I would agree with that," Hubbard said. "And this is not a policy shift because we thought we were headed in the wrong direction. It is a financial shift."

But tight budgets and a hot climate aren’t going away anytime soon. So the Forest Service’s new policy continues to shift the burden of global warming to future generations: their forest fires will be bigger and more costly because we refused to confront the new realities facing us now.

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Alpine has their snowmaking guns lined up to..umm...put the fire out if it comes near.

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Originally Posted by frorider

http://m.onearth.org/article/forest-...olicy-reversal

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They did this in 2012 as well.