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Wildfires in Alaska, might move SSQ out of hiding somewhere...
Might not...

It's getting pretty serious around here, folks. I just left a shop where the guys are mobilizing bulldozers to send to the Fairbanks area. The Steese fire is roaring toward Ft. Wainwright and Fairbanks.

Even though my home is a good 300 mile crow flight from the area, the smoke haze has turned the sky red.

I sure hope we don't have some idiot around here blow off fireworks for the 4th of July holiday weekend.

Jeeze Huntster. I saw the video of one of the fires on the news. That is a mess for sure. Stay safe ya hear. I sure wish I could send you some of this blasted rain we're getting....16 + inches for the month of June alone. We're just about to get water logged down here.

Take care.

Form a perimeter around the fire, and watch for 'squatch!

Me, too.

It's almost a sure thing; when we get rain, you guys get sun, and vice versa. Something to do with the jet stream, or so I've been told.

Same thing in winter. When it's mild here, you guys get whupped, and vice versa.

Yikes.......stay safe up there!!! Does Alaska have forest fires like that often? I'm always hearing about the West Coast but not up your way.

Yep; lots of them, big ones, and every year.

The reason you don't hear about them is because usually they're way out in the sticks, and folks and their dwellings aren't commonly threatened. They ususally just let them burn out.

This year we're REALLY dry, and several of the fires are near communities. It's been a bad combination.

And we watch on the news about the heavy rain and floods in Texas/Arkansas.

It's amazing.

Jeepers I didn't know that, thanks for the info. Sending some rain vibes your way Hunster:)

Over here it's rained at least every other day for the last two or three months. Farmers are only planting crops now, about 2 - 2 1/2 months late. You'd need serious amounts of accelerant to start a fire here.

I've often wondered about increased sightings or encounters during forest fires.



Squatch has gotta be affected by the shrinking habitat.

There doesn't appear to be any significant increase in reports in forest fire areas though.

RayG

Oh but who wants the fires of last year!
Remember when the Fire God came to Kelowna to Bar-b-que [I] Ogopogo?

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then came the night terrors...!!!

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and doesn't this little Heartbreaker say it all?

WHOA!!!!!

Where/when was that?!!!!

Looks like lots of folks lost their homes.

OMG.........looks like the end of the world in those pics:stress:

That was last summer, Hunster!
Kelowna, BC...about a three hour drive from here where I live! You know the place where Ogopogo lives. Lake Okanagan.
A lot of houses were burnt to the ground. On the west side of the lake...woods were burned right down to the shore..as seen in some of those pics.
But in an eerie way..like a twister..some houses were ashes ...while their neighbor's house was left untouched!
That fire raged for over two weeks. Until they had to give up fighting it on all fronts and let nature take its course. You can only do so much and the rest you leave up to nature..I guess!

I'm truly sorry to hear about that. What a disaster!



I understand perfectly. A few years ago we had a wildfire nearer my home than the current fires. It was called the "Miller's Reach Fire", and it was ignited by fireworks. Over 400 homes were lost.

One of those homes was my sister-in-law's summer cabin on Long Island in Big Lake. Long Island is over 1/4 mile from the mainland, and Lora's house was the only one on the island that burned.

The funny thing (if you can call it funny) is that her hubby was one of the two battalion fire chiefs in Anchorage, who was very busy at the time saving other buildings.

I told him that, after all these years of fighting fires, the Fire Gods finally got their revenge on him.

(I hope the photo I attached works - I've never done that before)

Photo caption: Cushman Street in downtown Fairbanks, as well as much of Interior Alaska, is shrouded in thick smoke from the nearby Boundary wildfire. (Photo by Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)

Wow! Looks like the aftermath of a battle zone...almost post St. Helens.

BTW, was there an unusual amount of sightings after the Mt. St. Helens disaster? The fire may be a different scenario all together, with most wildlife having plenty of time to evacuate, but I do agree this could bring about a spike in the number of sightings..

Yup! I hear ya!
Three firefighters lost their own homes in this one too!

The thing is....this was not even the Big fire of last summer!
The big one was caused by a cigarette. Poor slob was clearing the edge of his property when a discarded but set the perimeter on blaze.
Spread..literally..like wildfire! 17,000 hectares within a few days!
Very scarey summers on the west coast up to Alaska. Hope this summer is not a repeat!

damn, i got friends living in fairbanks.

Good news. The winds turned toward the north, and we have a low pressure system moving in with humidity.

Even now in Palmer the red hue in the sky has subsided.

Firefighters are getting some help.

There was an interesting article in our paper this morning:

LITTLE ROCK (AP)-

Smog high in the atmosphere that traveled half a continent to cover Arkansas apparently is one reason for relatively cooler temperatures over the past weekend.

National Weather Service officials said Tuesday that the smog, smoke from Alaskan wildfires, was moving out of the state to the east after blanketing much of Arkansas at high levels for a few days.

"It keeps our temperature down. It acts just like a cloud layer," said meteorologist Emilie Nipper.

Alaska has been having one of its worst wildfire seasons in years, with more than 3.5 million acres already burned. But most of the state's 107 fires are in Alaska's remote and unpopulated forests, and many are being allowed to burn.

Nipper said smoke from the fires was carried east by high-level winds to the Great Lakes region, then swept down the Mississippi River corridor. She said that contributed to a Monday morning low of 69 degrees that was close to the record 64.

A NASA photo taken Monday from the satellite Terra showed a blanket of smoke covering Arkansas, most of Louisiana and part of Texas.

The smoke haze has been bad all over Alaska all summer. We usually have super clear skies. Not this year.

What's worse, the winds turned south again, and the Boundary Fire is threatening Fairbanks again as of yesterday. The Haystack area NE of town was evacuated yesterday.

Yeah, yesterday the smoke/haze was hanging over HOUSTON. The news reported it was from the Alaska fires.

Made things kinda nice and balmy down here, though.