Well, it hit the fan this year. Lots of guys are scrambling...
Tags are still available where I hunt but won't be for long. If you're looking PM me, I'll check a couple times a day for a while

My favorite spot is up in smoke.
There are fires everywhere. Link

Thank God we have sporadic rain today(!!!) and more forecast for tomorrow....driest weather most have seen here in many, many years if not ever. Most logging operations have been shut down and loggers have been fighting fires.

Humidity was 5% the other day...unbelievable.

We were worried about losing our acreage here, hunting has ended up very low on the priority list even with the wife and daughter both drawing excellent local cow elk tags..

There closing down the whole forest up here..No entry...



Jayco

It's pouring out there right now...thank God.

We didn't think it was ever going to rain again....thinking it has rained once since mid May. 90's+ every day.
We're north of Moscow about an hour...

Broomed


Glad to hear you're getting the rain, I'm an hour + south and it's just starting!
Yippie!!!!!
Please lord, let it pour and keep the yellow shirts safe!
LJ

With the high winds that kicked up this afternoon I had heard that they were evacuating Priest Lake and Priest River. A real mess up here.

Glad to hear you folks got some moisture. Nothing here on the Snake today, an hour or so SW of Moscow, except a few drops. Humidity was up though which might help.

Fella at work says they are doing evacuation notices down around Peola WA and farmers down that way are plowing the stubble to slow the fire down if it gets out of the forest. Area burned around 10 years ago too.

Elk hunters in this part of WA are wondering what the season's going to be like for them too.

Geno

Hope that you see some much-needed rain tomorrow...it is forecast around here....

Can't see the mountains form my house due to smoke form Idaho and Washington. And we're south of Denver.

Hope you guys get a LOT of rain.

Amazingly, most of southern Idaho has been largely spared...so far. It's very dry out there, though, and a big one can get going in no time at all. The curse in much of the west is cheat grass. A wet winter & spring makes it grow thick and tall. When it dries off in late June, it makes the rangeland a fire bomb waiting for a spark.

Well,today is the bow season opener along with wolf and last night they did this in my area:



The Salmon river is closed also to fishing or floating from Riggins to French creek.

My logging outfit been shut down for a week due to very dry conditions up here in northmost idaho... we were on of the last crews to be shut down.

Then being we had idle equipment, I was deployed with the dozer to fire lines around houses, open up 'dormate' roads and such to help keep EVERYTHING from burning. Somr cases it worked, some cases the fire consumed everything.

It is dry this year no doubt about that, But a little more management of forests and rangelands... 'aiming specifically at federal owned ground' and the powers to be that are incharge of such, could have curbed this frigg'n rediculess fire season from being as bad as it is. Nobody wins with these fires, nobody. Federal policy has got to change... but thats anouther WHOLE ball of dirty wax

We got some rain today thank god, cleaned the air and settled the dust. My throte is raw, eys scratchy but far from what others had happen to them.

Boom, you guys have my utmost respect...you loggers and the deployed fire crews are tough-ass hombres. It is dangerous, dirty work to say the least.

It's absolutely pouring out there right now, this should greatly alleviate fire danger here for the remainder of the Summer if it keep blowing and sheeting like it is all day long.
I ran 2.5 miles in it this morning, never felt so good...

A good bunch of SW ID burned about 3 years ago....I'm sure that's helped the number of fires here.

Thoughts and prayers for you all up north.....it doesn't seem to be getting any better, year after year.

Its been pouring rain for over an hour here in St. Maries. All of the dust is turning to slimy mud, its great. I hope it continues.

Awww shucks broomd...... It is still lightly raining up here, I can clearly see across the valley now, have not been able to for little over a week now and the breeze is COLD.

I cannot see any smoke right now, hopefully all hot spots and fires are killed off with this rain

HB.

I will be heading back to where we were last year. Leaving home on the 10th. I will not have a father in law to baby set this year..

Cheat grass is an annual and the seeds will survive really HOT fires. The cheat burns hot and fast so the sage, etc. are killed to reduce competition so cheat comes back the next spring stronger than ever. It's the reason that many of the fires are as bad as they are. A range fire without cheat burns cooler and much less intense so the native plants will survive it.
Livestock will eat down the green cheat and reduce the fire hazard but the greenies are adamant about getting the stock off the range where it can do some good.

It's not so much the temperature of the cheatgrass fires as it is the repeated nature of them. Most areas of southern ID were historically on a fire return interval measured in decades. Not uncommon in areas with a lot of cheatgrass to have multiple fires in one decade. Grazing cheatgrass off in a manner to reduce fire hazard is a pretty darn hard thing to do. Timing and year to year fluctuation of cattle numbers being particularly tough riddles to crack. The best approach is to get the areas reseeded, even if only by aerial broadcast.