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drm
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drm
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PostWed Sep 16, 2020 10:22 am 
I just saw this report from the Timberline Trail on Mt. Hood.
Quote:
...Thought the wind storm was a no show until we got down to the Sandy River. The very last bit of that was in shambles, trees knocked down everywhere. Then not bad to Ramona Falls. After Ramona we hit a pretty large section that required a lot of maneuvering to get through the large downfall. Made it through that and it was clear to Yokum cutoff trail. After that though it was complete devastation! We were determined to make it through, so struggled for about an hour getting over, under and through massive destruction...sometimes on all fours or just removing packs. Got to a place we could see for a mile or so and it all looked the same! We had to wave white flag and reverse to Paradise

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Pyrites
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PostWed Sep 16, 2020 3:30 pm 
I assume trail crews aren’t even evaluating needed work. They’re all on a fire crew somewhere.

Keep Calm and Carry On? Heck No. Stay Excited and Get Outside!
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Foist
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Foist
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PostThu Sep 17, 2020 11:30 am 
We did a backpacking trip on Labor Day weekend around Whatcom Pass via the Little Beaver trail. Going in, the trail was in great shape, except for some brushiness in the upper reaches. Coming back on Tuesday -- the day after the windstorm -- there was a ~2 mile section around the wilderness boundary on the Little Beaver trail that had *tons* of new deadfall. There actually was a trail crew already working on the trail while we were there, but I don't know if they had the time budgeted to handle the section with the new deadfall, since that part seemed to have already been cleared this year. We were glad we had left an extra hour cushion before our appointed water taxi pickup...

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gb
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gb
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PostThu Sep 17, 2020 1:06 pm 
These types of localized wind events typically take place with descending east winds or with a small tornado. The earlier argument that east winds had been overstated along the Santiam was pretty silly.

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puzzlr
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puzzlr
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PostThu Sep 17, 2020 10:08 pm 
Quote:
I assume trail crews aren’t even evaluating needed work. They’re all on a fire crew somewhere.
On Wednesday I talked to a USFS trail crew heading out of the Middle Fork. They had been working on some big trees that fell across the Middle Fork trail upstream from the Dingford Creek trailhead.

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gb
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gb
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PostWed Sep 23, 2020 6:47 pm 
From Wildfire Today citing a study of extreme updrafts and downdrafts measured over a forest fire: www.Wildfiretoday.com
Quote:
Researchers flying near smoke plumes over a large wildfire found extreme updrafts up to 130 mph and downdrafts reaching 65 mph. Operating radar and other sensing equipment in a small plane, one of the scientists was injured as the aircraft experienced a dramatic vertical displacement as it penetrated a 34-meters-per-second updraft in a plume over a flank of the 2016 Pioneer Fire in Idaho. This is the first time the vertical velocity structure of a pyroconvective updraft has been viewed in such detail. The research showed that intense fires can produce updrafts that rival or exceed those in tornadic supercell thunderstorms. An unexpected finding was that the updrafts strengthened with height above the surface, at least initially, challenging the assumption that they should decelerate with height. The updrafts, the strongest ever documented, can be a hazard to aviation since they do not always show up on pilots’ weather avoidance radars, as discovered during a Qantas flight over a bush fire in Australia in January, 2020. Passengers experienced turbulence and darkness as the airliner entered the pyrocumulus cloud.

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