smoke
These fires are 250 to 300 miles away but the winds have been steady from the southwest......yeah gads. In talking with my meterology contact in Ft. Collins, Colo, they too are getting the smoke, add another 500 miles to the smoke's path. |
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Not good for anyone in the area  Are they having any luck w/ the fires?? |
| My sister is in Albuquerque visiting her daughter this week. I talked to her last night and she told me about the smoke, and said there is fine ash in the air and by evening, the mountains are totally hazy. Hopefully the fires will be under control soon. How do wild fires start? Is it generally deliberate? |
Hope they get the fires out soon. We had some in North Texas a few months ago, not fun. Best of luck to you, stay safe.  |
| The fires are terrible and feel so bad for those who have to evacuate and also all those fighting these fires. |
| Wallow fire, on east side of AZ, unknown cause at this time, 192,746 acres burned, 0 containment, 2,315 firefighters Horseshoe fire, SE corner of AZ, human caused, 100,200 acres burned, 55% contained, 976 firefighters Miller fire, SW New Mexico, human caused, 88,835 acres burned (has been burning for a month as it is in a wilderness and mechancial devices can't be used to fight fires), 95% contined, 255 fire fighters. Not so much deliberate as stupidity.......unattended campfires, pulling into grassy areas with cars hot undercarriage, tossing a cigarette out the window, burning trash, etc. Some is deliberate. Come July 4th there are fireworks fires even tho they are totally illegal. There's another fire south of Taos that was caused by a downed power line during all our big winds lately. We had a fire here a month or so ago, hobby rocket builders. |
Yikes ...I feel for you. We've had to live with the wildfire smoke haze several times  .Itchy eyes, skin that feels gritty, lungs clogging up, and the constant reptile-brain feeling of low-level panic  ...it SUCKS!I'll bet your getting some pretty sunsets though, right ?  . |
Oh, my prayers go out to all in the fires! Having just sustained a hosue fire, I can't imagine the magnitude ot the fires in AZ! Stay safe...wear a mask if outside...dogs feel the smoke more than us so be careful with them...And their feet pick up the residue too... Be watchful of licking paws, etc... Even their fur. Note my post about having to shave my dogs fur down...That smoke is insiduous and gets into everything and anything....Sending our sheepie thoughts and hugs to anyone suffering the fires...  |
| Skies right now are ochre. Moderate (30 mph) from southwest so the smoke train continues...and will continue for days until this overall national weather pattern changes. The communities of Alpine AZ, Nutrioso AZ have been evacuated and Luna NM is on evacuation stand by as the Wallow may cross into NM. http://www.inciweb.orgI know it's hard to think of AZ and NM as having forests, but we do......and some very lovely ones. Took Glacier to vet as we don't know if she's suffering from the smoke, old age, UTI, or even Cushings. Blood tests back tomorrow. Dogs are staying inside as much as possible. |
| How awful, I hope that they get them under control soon. Fire fighters rock. I hope that you are breathing fresh air again soon. |
| That sounds really awful! Hope they get them all under control very soon. |
| I also hope they get the fires under control - it's horrible for people expecially those that are prone to breathing problems. I feel for the animals too that have lost their homes..bad for everything. Marianne |
| We get a lot of fires here in Florida and lightening is one of the causes here... Arsonist, cigaretts, controlled fires getting out of hand, many reasons why they "fire up". It is scary when you hear or smell one in your area. I've learn to look in the sky and tell the difference between smoke and clouds. It amazes me that your fires are 300 miles away and how badly you are effected...interesting. I hope all clears up soon. |
| I forgot about lightning! It's a big concern right now, not only in the forests, but in the grasslands on the east side of the state. Everything is so dry right now, all it will take is a spark and wind. On the Wallow fire they had a storm build up, no rain reached the ground but the system collapsed creating a microburst that threw sparks 3 miles from the fire. This a.m. everything has a nice ash coat. Also it smells different. In addition to "campfire" there's something else......maybe just urban smog caught up in the mess. DH was telling me about some of the areas burning, he's retired Forest Service and these areas he knew quite well. Many area are extremely dense, choked with trees and "scrub" as he called it. When I asked him what he meant he said "shrubs." Those forests have scrub that can reach 12 feet tall, creating a great fire ladder......from ground, up the scrub into the the trees' crowns. It is ideal for fire and impossible to get man or machine in there. The enviros haven't wanted timber harvesting or even thinning, and now Mother Nature will do the work. Of course Glacier and Harry insist on going outside around 3:30 a.m. to do their morning patrols. They come in smelling like BBQ. |
| I saw some of the vivid sky pictures this morning on the Weather Channel. Pretty if you aren't there breathing the air or worried your home will get burned!  |
| Just read Springerville has been put on preevacuation orders......the south side of town abuts the forest, north of town in grasslands. Springerville and neighboring Eager are about 6,000 people. This fire won't stop until it hits natural unforested terrain or until rains come which will be mid to late June Movement has been north to east......if the winds shift it goes right into the Apache Rez on the west.....they have beautiful forests. |
| The smoke and haze is all the way up here to Loveland/Johnstown area. I don't have asthma but Friday night i sure found out what it FELT like to have an asthma attack! Once you smell that smell, you never forget it. Having worked on all the fires back in the 80's, I loved doing them (USFS Security officer). Was good pay, but now i can smell one a mile off. I'm just praying that the storms that are expected to hit later this week don't start MORE fires with lightening. That is what made Yellowstone called "the black hole' back in the 80's. Once a firefighter went in, they didn't come out for weeks......... I was gone for 9 weeks. Last one out of Yellowstone that fire. Somewhere i have all the pictures. Part of the problem is the Park Service, they will not allow ANYthing to be taken out of the forrest, no cleaning up the scrub brush or downed pine needles etc. that would be food for fire. Heck they even gave us USFS people a ticket for driving across the grass to put out one of their fires! sheeshe. Stay safe..........you can always wear a 'mask'........ |
| One of the smartest things DH did soon after we got married was turn in his fire card. He fought enough small and large project fires, ate enough smoke, that he had no desire to do it any more or to be around them. This is just heart breaking when you view the pictures of the area. If you go to the fire website http://www.inciweb.org then to the Wallow Fire. On the right hand side they have links to Google Earth to show where the fire has spread. If you click the picture icons within the burn area you'll see pictures from before the fire, this is truly, or was truly beautiful country. |
| My thoughts and prayers are with you all...Hopefully you will not need this idea but perhaps its a good time to get an emergency kit together, along with your important papers, dog supplies, etc, in case you need to evacuate. Fire is nothing to ignore. Stay safe...keep us posted. |
| The fire is no where near me, but the region is so dry anything could explode with the slightest spark. Smoke from these AZ fires are now in Minnesota. |
SheepieBoss wrote: The fire is no where near me, but the region is so dry anything could explode with the slightest spark. Smoke from these AZ fires are now in Minnesota. Yes it is. I saw the faint haze yesterday, but not so much this morning. |
| Here is a link with some stunning pictures - http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/159412/ ... pringe.htm |
| Yep. Did you notice the dome in Springerville? It's their football stadium, highschool football is big up there. |
SheepieBoss wrote: Yep. Did you notice the dome in Springerville? It's their football stadium, highschool football is big up there. Yes I did...I guess it is a big deal! I grew up in a big football town, but we didn't have a dome..although we all know the success of domes in MN now..... |
 Yep, giant snow globes with the snow inside! |
Friends of ours have a second home Show Low, AZ and have packed up and headed home to Mesa. Show Low is less than 50 miles northwest of Springerville so if the wind changes at all they may lose their place.  |
| Show Low is North west of the fire, but a lot of people are in that area: Show Low, Pine Top and Lakeside and all in heavy timber. The fire would have to do some serious traveling to get there. They had the Rodeo fire a few years ago on the other side of Show Low. Eager will probably suffer some damage on the south side within the next day or so, but hopefully all the fire people there will save as many structures as possible. The town isn't in timber, thankfully. Springerville is just to the north east.......they sorta touch. It's all very sad. If the winds continue to the NE, the fire is out of the tall timber, for the most part and will move into smaller pines and grass lands. However if the winds change the fire will have more tall timber to burn and that's unstoppable. This may well become the largest fire in AZ history. The worry now is electric transmission lines may be burned. The power supplies west Texas, northern Mexico and southern New Mexico. Yeah and the fire is poised to move into New Mexico. Still smokey here, but not as thick as the winds have been less. There are two other fires in Arizona, one south of this one and another southwest of Tucson. The sw fire is in mountain much favored by drug runners for landing strips and for pot growers. Probably not as bad as the fires in northern California where pot farms flourish in the forests and fire fighters come off the lines stoned. |
Maggie McGee IV wrote: Friends of ours have a second home Show Low, AZ and have packed up and headed home to Mesa. Show Low is less than 50 miles northwest of Springerville so if the wind changes at all they may lose their place. One of the pics in the link Dawn provided has a highway sign showing which way to turn to go to Show Low. |
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