Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Smoke

The entire western US and Canada is loaded with wildland fires and smoke, including the new fires in the Big Belt Mountains shown in MtnBoomer's pic. Here's a link to a great website that shows the location of wildfire, smoke plumes and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) monitoring sites across the USA: Wildland Fire and Smoke Map If you zoom in on the map, you'll get an appreciation for the concentration of smoke moving across North America from the thousands and thousands of wildland fires burning across most of the Rocky Mountain West in Canada and the USA.

Wait till a few hundred nukes pepper planet earth. Going to get dusty.

I've been waiting on that for sixty years. I remember the Cuban Missle Crisis, I was 11 years old, my mom driving us back from football practice, and the guy on the radio news in the car saying, more or less, "Kennedy has announced a blockade. Pretty good chance a nuclear war will begin tomorrow." And I thought it would.
Somehow, we have never had one, much to my surprise. I bet there will be some gorgeous sunsets after the nuclear war, but nobody home to see them.

Parts;
Morning to you sir, I hear it's worse up where you are than down here - if that's even a possibility?

For the rest of the folks, we're located directly west of the Thomas Creek fire - it was maybe a bit less than a kilometer from our place on the first and second day.

https://www.castanet.net/news/Penti...0-hectares-up-to-10-000-in-just-24-hours

Then about a week after that this lit up just south of us and has surpassed the first one in size.

https://www.castanet.net/news/Penti...re-grows-to-13-000-hectares-BCWS-mapping

It's tough walking some mornings as it does make it difficult to breath.

When we drove into Penticton on the grocery run yesterday we couldn't see across Skaha, which is a pretty narrow lake as you know Parts.

We're at the narrowest place in the entire Okanagan Valley here and I can't see the other side as I type, so visibility is maybe 500 meters?

Stay safe all, it's already been an interesting summer and it's only now August which was traditionally the bad month.

Dwayne

We have smoke down here on the Gulf Coast too.

https://fire.airnow.gov/

A bit of rain on the coast yesterday morning (nothing signficant) and spitting this morning so hopefully it is headed east where they could use any help. Cooler though so I guess there is the chance of more lightning to go with it. Going to make hunting a real challenge this fall, if there is anywhere left that isn't burnt up.

The jetstream brought it to eastern nc a few days last week. Hazy and could smell it.

Hope everyone out west gets a break soon.

Its been bad. Would be nice to see blue sky's again

Good luck with it all.

Looks like most of Montana.

mostly fires in Montana in the Thompson Falls area and over by Wallace ID. affecting N ID
ID


Of course there are fires throughout WA, MT, ID, BC, OR

Yep.

I was working south of Poplar, Brockton area, north and south of 201. Its F’ing sickening how dry it is.

With all those acres of crops, pastures and grass lands if a fire gets started on a windy day, it’s going to be bad.

I wonder what are effects of the smoke on various crops?

Unseasonably cool and rainy in Texas. Time to summer in Texas and winter in Idaho?

With all the fires around home and the California fires, we have had smoke for well over a month! Yesterday the wife and I drove halfway around the Bootleg fire! Some is pocket burnt, other areas are moonscape looking! I haven't been on a fire in 40 + years, when they pulled logging and mill workers to fight fire! I give lots of respect to fire fighters who walk, where the devil dances!

673:
Morning my friend, I hope you're all doing as well as you can despite the going's on.

It could always get worse - yesterday morning just as my good wife got up the power went out in much of the south valley - so no coffee...

I mean, we've got camping coffee makers and all that, but we'd just decided to wander up to Penticton with our daughter for coffee and some Tim's breakfast something when the power came back on at her place. Since we were there and she's a wee bit of a coffee snob, she treated us to a wonderful cup of coffee!

Here's a link I found that broadly addresses how plants react to smoke.

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/wildfire-smoke-boosts-photosynthetic-efficiency

When we had that big fire in Kelowna and the Vaseux fire at the same time, there was talk among the wine makers that it was going to maybe be a bad year for whites, but as it turned out they weren't able to really tell the difference.

This year is worse for sure as far as the number of days we're socked in, so we'll see.

Even with screens on the windows, when we open the house up at night everything is covered in fine ash.

Ah well, keeps me out of mischief cleaning the place up!

It's not like I'm going up the mountain scouting in these conditions or anything.

All the best to you all this August long weekend.

Dwayne

We stay down on the river bottom when it's windy.

Way too scary up here where I am right now to be working in the wind.

We had it pretty good on the KP this summer. Cooler and a bit more rain than recent years.

2019 was record heat and drought. That was the year of the Swan lake fire. It got bad enough there were pilot cars through the smoke on the highway. 20 yard visibility. Then, pilot cars were necessary to travel through the roadside flames. Don’t miss that.

Been Smokey here in NE Alberta, sounds like several forest fires burning in BC from the southern edge up into the interior. Very dry summer across western Canada. Quite disappointing currently cutting my wheat for green feed , as it was droughted out . Under 4” of rain since may. Last year at this time we had over 20” of rain . Friggin tinderbox

My son is working on the Mud Lick fire just west of Salmon Idaho. He has been gone a month tomorrow. Worked the trail creek fire in Montana just before this one. Got one 48 hour break in between fires. The Wildlands guys are plenty busy this year for sure. Good luck Ed, I hope your place stays safe.