The Badger Fire, 45k acres at this point, burning in a Nat Forest just north of the NV border. The cause is unknown so far. This is a mix of low sagebrush hills with pockets of timber all over it. When the fire gets out in the cheatgrass/sagebrush areas, it can really fly. There are some houses down a draw that the fire's approaching. The fire's still some miles from it but they're evacuating everyone as a precaution.
As far as human cost goes, this isn't even remotely as costly as some of the fire in CA, OR, and WA. However, this is prime mule deer and elk habitat and this is burning in the dead center of it. The seasons open in 3 weeks...maybe. This is going to change the hunting a lot this year.

Pics from our local paper.

The color quality of the top pic isn't great, but it sure doesn't look like scorched earth upwind of the fire line.

It looks to me like the scorched earth is downwind of this particular fire line. It happens that way sometimes.

If arson, I hope they crucify 'em.

Wow! What a year, huh?

Fire can really move in that land cover

My son just got the call about an hour ago. His Wildlands crew is heading there right now from Utah!

Hope he and his crew stay safe.

Yep. A damn busy year for the fire crews.

https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm

Thank you

They're trying to protect some houses and a ski resort.


As far as the scorched earth - in the 1st pic the fire's burning into the wind, right to left, so it's not scorched...yet. This was last night's photo so It probably is by now, though. The wind moves the smoke but isn't blowing hard enough to slow down the fire.

He told me they were going in to help with some structure protection

This thing went nuts overnight. It jumped from 45k acres to 97k. It's now burning some critical deer winter range. That's going to push the deer into farmland this winter. It topped a ridge with a bunch of houses below it. They're backfiring to try to keep it from moving down. It's still a mile or so from the ski area but there's a large treeless open area between them so some backfires in sagebrush and grass might stop it there.

Wow.

Probably gonna to lose a bunch of winter graze for the cattlemen.

Grazing permit holders have to have their stock off of public land by a certain date, in late Sept. I believe, so there is no winter graze. Deer are another matter.

Yeah, they graze around the ski resort in the winter ‘round here....... lol!

We just sent a clipper down to Badger from Flathead. Called us at 630PM last night, expecting it to be in Burley 24 hours later? Right, after working all week?
Animals went out to the woods with one lowboy early this AM, they dropped it at the shop, we washed it down and did a quick check, put it on ANOTHER lowboy (can only drive 11 hours), passed USFS inspection at 10 AM and is now going 550 miles.
Hopefully the clipper will be useful getting some fire lines seriously chewed out.

The problem won't just be a loss of winter range for wildlife like deer, but it will allow for the expansion of 'cheat grass' - the vegetation plague of the Intermountain West!

We already have our fair share of cheat, miserably crap.
The fire's well over 100k acres now. The fire crews put in a hard night but they did their job and not a single house burned. They got it stopped along a steep ridgetop overlooking dozens of homes & farms. They also saved the ski area. You can't say enough about those guys. Now they're working on another front to keep it from burning farm fields. There's a lot cropland waiting for harvest out there.

How much fuel is still inside the perimeter, RC? Is it wall to wall burnt or are there lots of green pockets?

Camp is moved to Oakley as far as I know, so you're probably right, they want to protect those pivot parcels east of the fire from a southwest wind.

Damn shame, but hopefully they can do some reseeding or such on the sage/grasslands to keep the cheat down to a mild roar.

If you folks get some mild rains soon, the forbs might start sprouting some before the hard freezes and maybe get a head start on the cheat and provide some food for the deer and elk.

Still no rain here, we had some clouds, no dry lightning that I heard of, so now another week of dry weather in the forecast. Maybe you folks a bit further North get some moisture to help out.

This is high desert. It's not uncommon to get no rain at all before we get snow and the snow often doesn't come until after mid- November. The problem is that we didn't get out normal spring rain. That's why the trees are so dry.

I don't know. The photos I've seen don't show and their maps just show the perimeter. I'm sure not going in to have a look. Some years ago there was a big burn about 100 miles north of here in heavier forest. The next year, Google Earth posted new photos of the are and you could see unburned green all over the place.

Here's an interesting photo of the center of the fire area from Google Earth. You can't tell when the photos were taken but the left side is summer and the right side appears to be spring when there are snowdrifts on the downwind side of all the ridges. This has all burned in the last few days I don't know what those white numbered boxes are.

LIke many fires in the west, this is another example of what happens when beetle killed stands of trees catch fire. They explode. Many of those pockets of trees are full of dead wood. It's a very popular firewood cutting area and the stands that are accessible get cleaned out but most of them can't be reached by vehicle. It's not a case of mis-management but rather one of accessibility.
A lot of it is lodgepole. That has a short life expectancy, maybe 150 years, and the majority of trees in a patch are roughly the same age. Lodgepole needs fire to germinate the seeds so after a fire, they all get germinated at the same time. The FS goes in and clearcuts a stand of mature lodgepoles and lets firewood cutters take it. Then they burn the slash which germinates the seeds to start over. In this area, their plan is to recycle each patch every 50 years. Younger trees are more resistant to beetles.

As a followup: the fire has been pretty much contained at about 90k acrers. It's still burning actively but mostly inside the perimeter. The area is full of dense stands of lodgepole and subalpine fire. Beetles have been busy and there are lots of areas of heavy downfall and standing dead trees. The fire's busy cleaning those up, a very good use of fire in the forest. Lodgepole needs fire to germinate the seeds so this will bring them back quickly. While firewood cutting is heavy in accessible areas, most of this is too steep for access and wood cutters can't get at it. They figure it'll take another 3 weeks for the interior fires to finish burning the deadfall. It's pretty hot in there. They'll start pulling out crews as soon as they're convinced that the perimeter is controlled which might be another week or two.

The fire crews did an outstanding job of protecting buildings. All that burned were some campground outhouses and foot bridges. One sad loss was a historic 4 holer outhouse. You could take the wife and 2 kids in there and have some quality family time.

This area is used by grazers and some livestock was lost. They got most of the stock out but 1 rancher missed some cattle and lost about 50 head. They're meeting now to discuss optional grazing lands. They figure it'll take 2 years before they can graze this area again.