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Schroder
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PostTue Jun 04, 2019 9:53 pm 
Only four days into June and
Quote:
Grant County residents flee fast-growing wildfire Several hundred residents of Grant County have been told to evacuate because of a fast-moving wildfire that grew overnight to more than 3,500 acres and then spread another 500 acres by mid-Tuesday. Officials don't believe it will be contained within the next few days.
This is after the Alberta wildfires
wikipedia wrote:
The 2019 Alberta wildfires were described by NASA as part of an extreme fire season in the province.[7] From March 1, when the wildfire season begins, until May 31, there had been an "historic" level of hectares burned—496,739.19 or 4,967.4 km2 (1,227,500 acres),[8][9][10] which is over 3.5 times more land burned that in the five-year average amount of hectares burned.[11] This increased to 528,842.99 hectare or 5,288.4299 km2 (1,306,799.5 acres) by June 1.[12] From March 1 to May 30, there have been 502 wildfires recorded in Alberta.[13][9] By May 31, 10,000 people had been evacuated, 16 homes,[5] and the Steen River CN railway bridge, had been destroyed.
The Alberta wildfires have been responsible for much of the haze in the Puget Sound area the past week.

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rossb
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PostTue Jun 04, 2019 10:19 pm 
I'm pretty sure that fires in Alberta in May are normal. To quote Cliff Mass:
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Having big Alberta fires in May is not unusual. Many of you might remember the huge Fort Murray wildfire that started on May 1, 2016 or the May 2011 Slave Lake fire.
If I'm not mistaken, the small (but growing) fire in Eastern Washington is happening in sagebrush and grasslands. I would guess fire in May or June for that type of terrain is fairly normal as well (but I'm no expert, someone could correct me). Now if we had a big fire in the Cascades this time of year, that would be weird.

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jinx'sboy
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PostTue Jun 04, 2019 10:19 pm 
The monthly fire behavior prediction outlook for the NW, for the rest of the summer, came out just yesterday. It doesn’t look good. https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/content/products/fwx/MonthlySeasonal.pdf Look at the snopack (SWE) charts. Or the drought charts. At the bottom are the predictive charts for the rest of the summer.

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Gil
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PostWed Jun 05, 2019 6:03 am 
Better to be prepared for fire season, wouldn't you say?

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gb
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PostWed Jun 05, 2019 6:25 am 
Current status in Alberta: Alberta Wildfire Service It also does not look like a good situation looking forward for SE Alaska, BC, Alberta, or Washington and Oregon - the drought continues. Long lead discussion: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/fxus07.html

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Mikey
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PostWed Jun 05, 2019 6:38 am 
I suspect the increase in Western Washington smokey air is partially caused by the Govt decision to let remote fires burn such as they did during the 2018 summer with that fire in the Olympic Nat. Park or Forest. Too many of the Eastern Washington fires are man-made caused which I suspect is the cause of the present "wildfire" which started east of Wanapum dam on the Columbia and has now spread east. That fire is primarily in sagebrush yet a UW Tacoma professor was on TV saying that such fires are more common because of the lack of removing underbrush and that present fire east of the Columbia river has little to do with underbrush. I observe too many people disposing of cigarettes while driving and the fires along I-5 are examples of this problem. Probably there should be a new name for man-made forest fires which would communicate that because "wildfire" might imply the fire was started naturally, like from lightning. Perhaps something as simple as "Man-Made Wildfire" and "Lightning Wildfire" would communicate better how the fire started so the pubic could be better informed. There was a fire ignited by contractors working on bridge repair in the CleElum area and that fire spread north to burn a large area.

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gb
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PostWed Jun 05, 2019 6:44 am 
gb wrote:
Current status in Alberta: Alberta Wildfire Service It also does not look like a good situation looking forward for SE Alaska, BC, Alberta, or Washington and Oregon - the drought continues. Long lead discussion: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/fxus07.html
Statistics show 90% of US wildfires are human caused, whereas in BC that number is just 50%.

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Schroder
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PostWed Jun 05, 2019 8:15 am 
rossb wrote:
I'm pretty sure that fires in Alberta in May are normal.
True that May is their fire season but "extreme fire season" and "historic level of hectares burned"..."3.5 times more land burned that in the five-year average"

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drm
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PostWed Jun 05, 2019 9:16 am 
Mikey wrote:
I suspect the increase in Western Washington smokey air is partially caused by the Govt decision to let remote fires burn such as they did during the 2018 summer with that fire in the Olympic Nat. Park or Forest.
There is also the issue of prescribed burns, which are most controversial due to the smoke created. But my guess would be that even adding prescribed and non-suppressed fires is a small percentage compared to what comes from fires in general.

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Mikey
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PostWed Jun 05, 2019 9:38 am 
With regards to prescribed burns, the Crown Zellarbach Corporation (later named James River) did not conduct slash burning on their forest lands after logging. At forestry meetings such as were held by the Northwest Pulp & Paper Assoc. and the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, the Crown Zellarbach speakers explained that it was to their economic advantage to remove (harvest) all the tree material which they used to make pulp and the waste was used in their hog fuel boilers. There was a myth that slash burning (ie prescribed burning) was required to make the soil better for growing seddling trees (mostly Douglas fir) planted in the logged off area. Some forestry graduate student studied this and found that in fact burning the forest slash removed important organic materials in the soil and some bacteria or fungii attacked the Douglas fir seedlings, harming their growth. I forget who funded this graduate students research project, but the funding had been provided to show that slash burning improved the growth of Douglas fir seedlings. The research project funds were ended. Former Oregon State University Professor of Mechanical Engineering Dick Boubel used to tell stories about the prescribed burn myths. The burning of field straw used to be common in Oregon and Washington and periodically the field burning smoke would blow across nearby highways and once the smoke blew across I-5 in Oregon near Murder Creek and caused many accidents (later some people thought Murder Creek was named after the people hurt and killed in the smoke caused accidents on I-5 but the Murder Creek name came from some other incident).

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treeswarper
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PostSat Jun 08, 2019 7:15 am 
I took part in a few broadcast burns on the westside of the state. At that time, old growth was still being cut. There was no use for the slash. It had to be burned because it was pretty much impossible to plant seedlings through it. We would be walking on top of slash and I saw a 6 foot coworker make a mis step and disappear through the slash. He was OK and we laughed about it. Can't plant through that stuff. The cull logs which had been left in the units would not burn completely, and that was OK. We needed to get "planting holes" made for reforestation. That was the intent of the burns. At the same time, I went with an engine to a fire just out of Enumclaw. It burned through the checkerboard land ownership. Weyco? had harvested second growth and had not done any burning. The wildfire did and fried their seedlings. Tree farms are a risky business.

What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
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cdestroyer
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PostSat Jun 08, 2019 7:46 am 
I dont know if tree farms are risky or not. Simpsons over by Shelton seems to be doing okay...

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Schroder
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PostSat Jun 08, 2019 10:01 am 
In today's Herald: Editorial: Haze has returned, and with it a wildfire warning
Quote:
Already, the DNR, which leads the state’s wildfire response, has fought more than 50 fires in the state; all but one was in Western Washington, the Skagit Valley Herald reported last month.

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Eric Hansen
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PostSun Jun 16, 2019 5:45 pm 
June 15th update, wild land fire outlook https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/content/products/fwx/MonthlySeasonal.pdf

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timberghost
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PostMon Jun 17, 2019 5:38 am 
That's encouraging

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