2020 Wildfire Season

[dunfree]

“Everything” burnt in California prior to “western” civilization coming. Regularly.

[altasnob]

All the forests in WA, OR, and CA have burned in the not too distant past. Go dig in the soil in a lush, wet, old growth forest and you will see burnt wood remnants. Trees like the redwoods rely on and are made for large fires. So not remarkable to say that all of the forest in CA will burn (they have, and they will). As others have noted, we have been preventing natural forest for the last century. That's now catching up to us. And today, we like to build homes out in the forests because we hate the cities and all want our own slice of paradise.

[KQ]

So gross....

[Meadow Skipper]

I'm no climate denier, but from what I've read, recent events have much more to do with a century of fire suppression as a management strategy and poor construction practices leading to a lack of defensible space than it does climate change. California has always had hot dry easterly winds at the peak of the dry season. It has always had fires. It has never had the density of fuel that it has today.

You’re wrong that suppression policies are the most important factor. To be sure, they are a factor, but climate change is much more responsible for the size and intensity of this fire bust. Intense drought and extended fire seasons have led to drier fuels, and higher temperatures and these unusually wide spread raging winds from the east are also extremely unusual historically.

[altasnob]

Here is what UW prof Cliff Mass says on this issue:

"Warming from increasing greenhouse gases is surely making the situation a bit worse, and its impact will undoubtedly escalate when the real warming occurs later in this century. But today, global warming is a relatively small element of the current wildfire situation, particularly in the slow to warm Pacific Northwest."

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/...eeing-new.html

[Dantheman]

I'm no climate denier, but from what I've read, recent events have much more to do with a century of fire suppression as a management strategy and poor construction practices leading to a lack of defensible space than it does climate change. California has always had hot dry easterly winds at the peak of the dry season. It has always had fires. It has never had the density of fuel that it has today.

It's both. I grew up in Trinity County. My Mom still lives in the house I grew up in and my Dad lives in Mt. Shasta now. When I was a kid there were always dry years, but 3/4 or 4/5 of years had average or above-average precip. Now it's more like every other year or even 2/3 years the winters are dry and adequate/wet years are the exception.

My childhood home gets all of its water from a spring on the side of the mountain. The house has close to an acre of grass surrounding it and my old man would usually keep it all green all summer (all mowed by me with a self-propelled walk-behind, the year I left for college he bought a rider...). He even built a pond on the property that was fed by the surplus water we had. In the driest years he'd let maybe half of it go brown and our family of four never worried about having enough water for drinking, showering, etc. These days, my Mom usually has barely enough water for just herself and to keep a little grass around the house green for fire protection. When we visited in August the sprinklers went off, showers were rationed and the boys peed outside to save water. If we were all living there today water would be a serious issue. I've tried to talk my Mom into selling in case the spring starts drying up completely in the summers and the value of the property nosedives. It is undoubtedly drier than it was 20 years ago.

[Meadow Skipper]

Here is what UW prof Cliff Mass says on this issue:

"Warming from increasing greenhouse gases is surely making the situation a bit worse, and its impact will undoubtedly escalate when the real warming occurs later in this century. But today, global warming is a relatively small element of the current wildfire situation, particularly in the slow to warm Pacific Northwest."

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/...eeing-new.html

I disagree, perhaps from a less acedemic but more experienced/ground-based POV. Empirical, if you will.

[old goat]

Has anyone experienced mild hallucinations from smoke exposure? Rode my bike to and from work in SF without a mask like an idiot yesterday. By the end of the day my memories of 5 minutes prior would mix with memories of what I thought were dreams.

At first I thought, no that was my dream last night. But after 5 hours I realized my mind kept creating memories of what I thought were dreams from last night, mixed with what had happened 5 minutes ago. I knew what was real and what was my "dream" but it kept happening and happening. Maybe this doesn't make sense but I'm still not thinking super clearly.

I've had that happen a couple of times recently, pre fires. It seems to be a variety of deja vu. I think it's from the disorientation we all feel from the pandemic. Harmless according to Dr. Google.

I'm no climate denier, but from what I've read, recent events have much more to do with a century of fire suppression as a management strategy and poor construction practices leading to a lack of defensible space than it does climate change. California has always had hot dry easterly winds at the peak of the dry season. It has always had fires. It has never had the density of fuel that it has today.

With these big fires defensible space seems to do no good. The flying embers skip over the defensible space and set fire to the house. See this article in the Sac Bee about a hot shot firefighter who managed to save his own house, which had defensible space, by putting out fires on the deck and garage with bottles of water. His neighbors, who also had good defensible space, lost their homes.
Daniels’ home survived, but only because he raced into Berry Creek on Tuesday night to save it himself with bottles of water and Gatorade he used to extinguish flames as they lit up his wooden deck and garage.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/californ...245639940.html

A little thicker here. This is a view of the Sisters, which are 7-9 air miles to the west. Can't see the sun.

I had to go to USPS. Wore my surgical mask from the moment I opened the garage door until I got home. Still got a massive headache.

But we still have a home...

That's what I remind myself, when I start bitching to myself about the smoke. Or about anything else.

[Sharon Needles]

People around here are forming what they call posses to keep watch for people starting all the fires [emoji15]

Meanwhile our air quality hasn’t been below 400 since Monday

[muted]

Here is what UW prof Cliff Mass says on this issue:

"Warming from increasing greenhouse gases is surely making the situation a bit worse, and its impact will undoubtedly escalate when the real warming occurs later in this century. But today, global warming is a relatively small element of the current wildfire situation, particularly in the slow to warm Pacific Northwest."

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/...eeing-new.html

What does he think today though after this years fires in the 'preseason'?

[old goat]

People around here are forming what they call posses to keep watch for people starting all the fires [emoji15]

Meanwhile our air quality hasn’t been below 400 since Monday

How do they identify the arsonists? POC, look like antifa, anyone they don't recognize? Hope the posses don't shoot each other. Strike that. Hope they do.

[PB]

What does he think today though after this years fires in the 'preseason'?

Not sure what he thinks, but based on personal bias, I'd say the "new" season starts in May and may, or may not, end in January.

[toast2266]

How do they identify the arsonists? POC, look like antifa, anyone they don't recognize? Hope the posses don't shoot each other. Strike that. Hope they do.

Lightning strikes have a strong liberal bias.

[altasnob]

Cliff Mass addressed the same question in his podcast today and says the same thing as he did in 2018:

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/...s-extreme.html

Also note, Cliff Mass's general opinion on climate change is that we are not really experiencing climate change today (at least in the PNW), but will in the next 100 years (and he provides data to support his claim). I don't agree with everything he says, but I do like he points out that Washington Gov Inslee saying today's fires are becuase of climate change is no smarter than Trump saying an abnormal cold spell in New England is proof climate change doesn't exist.

[bodywhomper]

You’re wrong that suppression policies are the most important factor. To be sure, they are a factor, but climate change is much more responsible for the size and intensity of this fire bust. Intense drought and extended fire seasons have led to drier fuels, and higher temperatures and these unusually wide spread raging winds from the east are also extremely unusual historically.

Adding the academic support into Meadow Skipper’s post (which I know he’s aware of):

https://youtu.be/K6EOL_7akWI

[uglymoney]

Forgive me if this is a repost but I found this fire map helped me get a bit of a grasp on the big fire picture.

https://graphics.reuters.com/CALIFOR...Hi5qVkwX0kwRHE

[jackattack]

I disagree, perhaps from a less acedemic but more experienced/ground-based POV. Empirical, if you will.

I think you mean anecdotal, empirical is by definition data driven.

[bodywhomper]

I don’t think this has been posted but here’s an explanation of events that led to the weather event earlier this week:

1. east asia has a record-breaking heatwave this summer
2. as a result, sea surface temps in east asia get really hot
3. a typhoon hits those hot waters, and sends a boost of extra energy into the jet stream
4. the jet stream hits 200 mph, and sends that slug of wind across the pacific
5. this pushes a mass of cold dry air down from canada along the rockies, switching the weather in the rockies from 100 degree heat waves to snowstorms
6. this burst of cold air pushes the preexisting mass of hot dry air towards the west coast, gusting up to 65 mph
7. this acts like a bellows on existing wildfires, and fires up a ton of new ones, and pushes their smoke and a huge cloud of dust ahead of it towards the west side of the mountains.
8. as the pulse of hot dry dusty smoky wind is pushed down the west slope of the cascades and sierras, the sinking air compresses and heats up, making things even hotter and drier and fire-prone.

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2...JXSru4de5DbLX4

[Meadow Skipper]

Ah, so Mass doesn’t think we’re in climate change? Right. Kind of puts him in the minority right there. Thanks, now I don’t have to look him up to see if he’s credible.

Just to add on a little more ground-based thought: The biggest element of the current situation is the rate of spread. Fire rate of spread (not intensity) is basically determined by three factors. One is terrain, but we can rule that out, it doesn’t change things here. The second is fuel moisture - and right now the fuels are very, very dry because of drought (boosted by the desert-based winds). You can argue whether current drought is caused by climate change, but fuel loading (how much fuel is out there) isn’t really a factor in fuel moisture like weather is, though it is critical to intensity.

The third factor is the weather - temperature, relative humidity, and wind. That’s what the biggest factor is right now. I’m not saying fuel loading from years of suppression isn’t a factor, but dryness caused by drought and measurably longer periods of high temperatures, and low relative humidity caused by the wind coming out of the desert, and the insane wind speeds are key factors driving the current situation. I should add the length of the drying season as a factor, which is getting longer.

Look, fire seasons are demonstrably longer than they were 20-30 years ago - climate change - and that leads to drier fuels. Crazy weather events like this fire season (and recent ones like 2016 and 2018) as well as increased tornado and hurricane and winter storm events are evidence of climate change. Ask any veteran wildland firefighter.

[Meadow Skipper]

I think you mean anecdotal, empirical is by definition data driven.

I’m going to go with this:

em·pir·i·cal
/əmˈpirik(ə)l/
adjective: empirical
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

Believe me or not, but I have observation and experience behind my postings here.

[bodywhomper]

Probably also is just throwing up his hands out of being overwhelmed with the scope of the problems in our country, some his doing and some from mother nature.

Over the past 3.5 yrs, the POS could have done a lot. He could have championed and pumped significant $$ to the states and federal land management agencies for fire preparedness, fire infrastructure hardening, forest fuel management/treatment projects, etc. He could have exempted federal environmental regulations on a short term. He could have streamlined contracting mechanisms. He could have pushed $$ for research and related job creation. This would have allowed for boots on the ground to have accomplished a lot and for some of these current fires to not be as severe.

After the Camp Fire that tore through Paradise, the CA gov, spent 40 days having his state fire agency develop and list their top fuels mitigation projects (many were not shovel ready) up to a total (kinda low) $$ value, then he approved those projects with funding, but the requirement that they’d have to be completed within 1 year. And finally, he temporarily suspended all state environmental regulations to allow for the projects to start ASAP.

[Dantheman]

Ah, so Mass doesn’t think we’re in climate change? Right. Kind of puts him in the minority right there. Thanks, now I don’t have to look him up to see if he’s credible.

His opinion on climate change being a minor factor seems to be specific to WA, which is experiencing less warming and drought than CA. It's undoubtedly a much bigger factor in CA. The flow from the spring at my old house doesn't lie and water levels in all the streams in the area tell the same story.

[KQ]

Getting worse. Saw a guy driving a convertible, top down. People dining outside too. Must have better lungs than me.

[heckacali]

Getting worse. Saw a guy driving a convertible, top down. People dining outside too. Must have better lungs than me.

Not for long.

[altasnob]

Was WA, OR, and CA in a drought before these fires? My quick research shows water levels normal in Western, WA, and a little below normal in Western OR and Northern CA. In the PNW, I believe we had a wetter and colder than normal summer and a remarkably benign fire season until a few days ago (when we got the highly unusual combo of high temps with stiff east winds). From what I've read, the fire season is getting longer in CA, but not necessarily true for WA at the current moment (may change in the future).

To me climate change is a factor in these fires, as is fire suppression, but increasing population and recreation in these areas also plays a major factor. How were all these fires started? No lightning, so assume all were human caused. Some nut jobs lit a few of them. But most are trees falling on power lines, correct? More people building homes in forest equals more power lines. Some fires were caused by people just driving around; this threat would increase with population increase.