This past couple of weeks had been hot, cool, windy, calm but one thing over all of it - smokey!
I started this post last week and want to get it finished!
As I had mentioned in the previous post, it has been high fire danger for several weeks now. Where we are we have 3 large fires in the general area, I'd say about 50 miles in range.
Nearest to our town is the Parker Ridge fire, still burning after about a month, but expanded to over 6,000 acres due to some high winds last week. Last Wednesday, 8/19/2015, the area farmers in the vicinity of the fire first used their tractors to make fire breaks and ultimately just burned their "stubble fields" as with the drought this summer has made very few crops viable anyway, but over 2,000 acres of fields.
Then there's the Tower Fire, near the community of Priest River but across the border into Washington. At over 10,000 acres, and with the way prevailing winds usually flow in the area, a lot of our smoke is actually coming from that fire by following along the valley as it meanders North and South.
The Clark Fork fire is over 12,000 acres so far, South East of Sandpoint, a bit North East of the fires that were burning in the Bayview area in that general vicinity of Lake Ponderay.
Below are some photos taken last Thursday,
I had to stop and fill up the truck at 3 Mile Junction and this was the view of the sun through the smoke and some low clouds. Taken about 7:45 am.
And below is this photo taken about 9:00 am out an office window. Still smokey and dreary.
The next day, last Friday the 21st, a predicted cold front did make it through the area. In fact we were woken up by an early morning thunderstorm. Early morning thunderstorms are actually not normal for the area. Afternoons and into the early evenings yes, middle of the night, sometimes, but very rare is the first thing in the morning storm like this one. We woke up to the loud booms of several very close by hits. But with the front came some strong winds that had started to blow out all the smoke taking away all the haze and smoke by that afternoon, NICE!
Back to that early morning lightning strike that woke us up, turned out it it was a hit about half way up on "Black Mountain," the mountain that from our house is about 2 or so miles and goes up to over 6,000 feet and is due to the height is topped by the areas TV and Radio translators / repeaters, various microwave transmitters that continue radio traffic towards Canada and East to Montana, a lot of important infrastructure that is vulnerable on top of the mountain should it burn.
While we didn't notice the smoke trail climbing on our way to work, the rising smoke trail was getting called in by 7:30 that morning, and luckily, the Forest Service was on it very quickly with water dropping helicopters and foot crews so by that same afternoon it was contained and didn't get out of hand even with the winds.
Saturday wasn't as windy but for that day it was actually clear!
By Monday it was back to the high pressure inversion and the smoke started building up again.
And today, Tuesday, it is looking about what it was last Thursday. :( (cough, cough)
Til next post, Tad
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