Wildfire 2021

[Meadow Skipper]

I know I’m being repetitive here but I just keep thinking about what is going to happen if CA gets a bad wind storm in August, September, October. Especially if it is paired with dry lightning like last year. July was several degrees above average, August is starting off the same. We already have the biggest non-complex fire in history.

Bill Gates and the Illuminati need to start seeding some clouds or something or were fucked.

What was historically a seasonal problem has become a year-round threat. Research from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego finds that weather patterns in California are changing. In Southern California, Santa Ana winds are projected to weaken in the fall and spring but remain strong in the peak winter season. With delayed fall rains, hazardous wildfire conditions will persist longer and later into the winter. This was the case in the December 2017 Thomas Fire. A strong and lasting Santa Ana after months without rain led to the largest wildfire in Southern California history. When rain finally came in January, the fire had stripped the slopes of vegetation leading to devastating debris flows in Montecito, California that killed 23 people.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-e...climate-change

[seano732]

Totally FUBAR’D all the way down here in Burque..... Haven’t seen the Sandia all day.... Vibes to the Western Mags, brutal season.

[fool]

I'm catching up on this thread but I remember this article from a year ago blew my mind (unfortunately): https://www.wired.com/story/west-coa...fire-infernos/

[old_newguy]

I find myself shaking my head at all of the recent “we will spend more money on air tankers and firefighters and fuels reduction” talk as if we can change the current direction in a meaningful way.

We are headed for 1.5 degrees C global warming by the 2030s, we are seeing more drought and more drought, pest and disease weakened forests. We see more prime fire days where the ability to stop fire spread is basically zero.

I can’t recall if the percentage of successful IAs has actually gone down, it doesn’t seem like it has, just that the fires that do get away are just not something you can put people anywhere near. It’s just to much energy being released to do anything about and it doesn’t matter how many 747s you have, if they worked anyways.

IMO - the dragon is out of the cave. I don’t see a successful strategy beyond large investments in fuels reduction around communities and if you are out in some spread out WUI community, well, I hope you have good insurance.

[splat]

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-e...climate-change

That's what I was thinking about - SoCal fire season hasn't even ramped up yet. Fire fighting is apparently getting less seasonal and going year round at this point.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

I've got a bad feeling about the Hollywood hills this year. A fire going through Laurel canyon would make the Oakland hills fire look like a picnic.

[John_B]

I find myself shaking my head at all of the recent “we will spend more money on air tankers and firefighters and fuels reduction” talk as if we can change the current direction in a meaningful way.

We are headed for 1.5 degrees C global warming by the 2030s, we are seeing more drought and more drought, pest and disease weakened forests. We see more prime fire days where the ability to stop fire spread is basically zero.

I can’t recall if the percentage of successful IAs has actually gone down, it doesn’t seem like it has, just that the fires that do get away are just not something you can put people anywhere near. It’s just to much energy being released to do anything about and it doesn’t matter how many 747s you have, if they worked anyways.

IMO - the dragon is out of the cave. I don’t see a successful strategy beyond large investments in fuels reduction around communities and if you are out in some spread out WUI community, well, I hope you have good insurance.

Exactly. In the watershed I live in about 40% of the 1,825 square mile watershed has burned in the past 7 years. Good luck finding the money and people to even thin/log a tenth of that in the same time period.

Edit: That was some halfassed math on my part and just used total acreage of fires regardless of if they moved outside of the local watershed. I downgraded my estimate 5% to make up for it. My point stands though.

[raisingarizona13]

You Californian folks best break out them rakes and get to it.

But more seriously, the Californian wildfire problem goes beyond your state. The smoke has been pouring into Utah and if this is the normal will have extremely harmful effects on their tourism industry. If people think the parks are crowded now, just wait until the prime season to visit without smoke and isn't in winter becomes a window of only a couple of months a year. I know, people are losing their homes and communities to fire there and it seems silly to talk about tourism in Utah but I'm just pointing out climate change is already fucking so many things up.

[neufox47]

We need to break out the rakes and the torches, with the torches being for use in the spring for prescriptive burns. We should be hiring and training burn bosses and crews as fast as possible.


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[liv2ski]

I've got a bad feeling about the Hollywood hills this year. A fire going through Laurel canyon would make the Oakland hills fire look like a picnic.

Please don't say that. While I loath my time growing up in Hell A, my memories of fun times partying in Laurel and Topanga Canyons is a fond memory I will take to the grave. Really sorry for everyone losses. neufox47 is right, clearing brush and controlled burns needs to be a all year job now. It is only going to become more of a problem. People need to mitigate the risk or fucking move.

[Meadow Skipper]

We need to break out the rakes and the torches, with the torches being for use in the spring for prescriptive burns. We should be hiring and training burn bosses and crews as fast as possible.

Back in my day the state air quality regs were the biggest practical hindrance to Rx fire implementation. And angry/clueless citizens.

[climberevan]

Back in my day the state air quality regs were the biggest practical hindrance to Rx fire implementation. And angry/clueless citizens.

Around here criticizing land managers for allowing fires to burn/not putting them out fast enough/letting them get too big AND for having prescribed burns which degrade air quality appears to be a popular pastime. This is done without irony.

We should probably be raking and then vacuuming the forests. But then they'll complain about the lack of pretty underbrush when they go on their monthly hikes.

[bodywhomper]

Back in my day the state air quality regs were the biggest practical hindrance to Rx fire implementation. And angry/clueless citizens.

its changing. slowly.

feinstein's bill includes more $$ for burn boss training stuff. i'm not sure if it's written well and likely does not provide enough $$. it'll also take time for it to turn into more fire on the ground.

[old goat]

Prescribed burns can only do so much with forest as overgrown as what we have now. It's going to take mechanical thinning on a massive scale to begin to return the forest to a state that can withstand seasonal fires without crowning. The best that can be hoped for is to protect the larger WUI communities and let the devil take the hindmost.

[Meadow Skipper]

Prescribed burns can only do so much with forest as overgrown as what we have now. It's going to take mechanical thinning on a massive scale to begin to return the forest to a state that can withstand seasonal fires without crowning. The best that can be hoped for is to protect the larger WUI communities and let the devil take the hindmost.

Yep. And some vegetation/forest types aren’t conducive to Rx burning. Example: SoCal chaparral - it either doesn’t burn, or it goes like gasoline. Rocky Mountain spruce species only seem to burn catastrophically.

[TBS]

Back in my day the state air quality regs were the biggest practical hindrance to Rx fire implementation. And angry/clueless citizens.

Still is. This area gets about 10-15 days in late spring that are conducive to Rx fire. Snow's out but still damp, not too windy, wind in the right direction, not too hot.
And even then people bitch. The Letters to the Editor from angry second home owners bitching about their getaway ruined by Rx smoke are special...

[grinch]

In case anyone isnt totally clear
"
Human activities 'unequivocally' causing climate change

World is likely to hit 1.5C warming limit within 20 years"


https://www.reuters.com/business/env...ns-2021-08-09/

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[old goat]

What is the site that shows active fire based on satellite imaging of hot spots--shows as red dots (yellow for yesterday). Thanks. I found one image on NASA's site but it lacked roads, towns, etc--just terrain photographs. I tried googling "interagency" but still didn't find it.

[old_newguy]

Prescribed burns can only do so much with forest as overgrown as what we have now. It's going to take mechanical thinning on a massive scale to begin to return the forest to a state that can withstand seasonal fires without crowning. The best that can be hoped for is to protect the larger WUI communities and let the devil take the hindmost.

Yes, but are we restoring the forests to 1930? Why? The data tells us we are headed for massive changes to ecosystems just based on temp. and precipitation changes.

For example: Does it even make sense to restore a low elevation pine forest or should we just log it and let it convert to brush?

Paradise is a great example of misplaced priorities I think. Sure, maybe the FS having done more land management upwind would have given them more time, but the fire probably could have started via any ignition source at the city limit and burned unchecked through the city because it appears there was very little effort put towards WUI common sense mitigation, no time to suppress and 50 mph winds.

Also see: Ashland last year, McKenzie River drainage, Santiam River Drainage, etc.


There needs to be a dramatic rethink about what we can actually do. “Restoring” the forests is going to take decades and decades and billions (trillions?) of dollars. Hell, we have been working on it for decades and decades. It’s like fighting the ocean at this point, the tide is coming in and we need to fall back and retrench until we can make meaningful changes on the landscape.

What IS happening is that big landscape management actions are occurring via huge fires burning under poor prescriptions resulting in fire behavior and effects we don’t like.

That was a downer to even write, but I am deeply pessimistic about our ability to change the landscape on the timescale required to mitigate the fires we are seeing and that even if we did modify the landscape as we wish that we would still see similar results.

[bodywhomper]

I worked on several projects that involved rx burns in chaparral and coastal sage scrub. I don’t think they ever got one lit unless it was for a back burn. Do you all consider backburns a type of rx burn?

The little rx burn that I volunteered at in the spring was for structural protection and involved mastication 4 years prior to the burn. There’s been prep work for the ones closer to my house on private property. Quite a bit more action with the prescribe burn associate. The mostly minor mishaps have all been related to pile burning.

Beale Air Force base did some fairly large rx burns late into the season this year (mainly grass and oak woodland) with success.

The West Tahoe project is 59k acres with 19.5k acres to receive mechanical treatment and an undisclosed acreage for rx burning, though they state ~2k acres per year.

A big hurdle with fuels management in maintenance. Gotta keep it up once at a good baseline. The small training burn I attended, the burn boss said that tribes in CA oak woodlands burned every few years around their occupation areas supposedly for fuel density maintenance.

[TBS]

^^^While fires have been getting worse the last few years, remember that fire behavior in the west runs in long cycles.

Biggest fire in Oregon recorded history was in 1845 at 1.5 million acres - guy was clearing his farmland with fire, the wind shifted and torched everything from Champoeg to Tillamook on the North Coast and Newport to the South. D’oh!

Next was the Siletz fire in 1849 - 800,000 acres

Next was the Silverton fire in 1865. Torched 1 million acres around Silverton.

The Big Burn around Wallace Idaho in 1910 burned 3 million acres.

There were also million acres blazes in Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin in the late 1800s

Here’s a chart of fire behavior in OR going back to turn of 20th century
https://www.oregon.gov/odf/Documents...tory-chart.pdf
You can see how the fires run in sync with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

Sorry - too big to embed

[Iowagriz]

What is the site that shows active fire based on satellite imaging of hot spots--shows as red dots (yellow for yesterday). Thanks. I found one image on NASA's site but it lacked roads, towns, etc--just terrain photographs. I tried googling "interagency" but still didn't find it.

Try maps.nwcg.gov/sa/



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[old goat]

Try maps.nwcg.gov/sa/



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that's the one I was looking for. thanks

[splat]

Think I smelled Greenville in the smoke today. Def not that pine needle/fresh green burned smell. Not as gnarly as when you smell houses etc burn more directly but there was something about the smoke today that had another essence in it.

[bodywhomper]

Was Taylor OR really in the WUI? I have friends up there that live in the WUI and were fine.

Where in the suburbs does the WUI (interface, not intermix) end and the non-WUI suburbs begin?