Two smallish fires of a few hundred acres each directly east of us had created a show at night. The fires, in Arlington and Gold bar are in heavily forested foothills and are earlier than usual. Typically the west side has substantially more moisture but this spring we've been in the 70's to mid 80's for a month with minimal moisture. Cooler temperatures and more moisture is forecast but it looks like this fire season is shaping up to be a doozy.

If it's a dry spring firefighting agencies scream about forest fuel moisture content being lower than normal and it's going to be a hell of a fire season. Be very scared and rely on them to protect us.

If it's a wet spring they scream about increased understory and flash fuel loads higher than normal and it's going to be a hell of a fire season. Be very scared and rely on them to protect us.

If it's a "normal", boring year, fire danger is high due to it normally being that way in summer, you know. Be scared and all that.

Seeing a pattern?

You are correct FB. Wet springs lead to greater fuel loads later in the summer and dry conditions lead to more combustible fuel loads that are currently present. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

BAN SUMMER!!

Well its all the truth.

The only thing that lowers it to fun, is constant wet. Which we are lucky to have right now.

But my fuel load is horrible if it dries this summer. Might be the worst fuel load in years at this rate. I have grass in parts of the pasture thats thigh deep. And not on a midget.

I get to fight the damn things so I agree. Its often very tough.

The prognosis is not incorrect even though it seems funny to you. And until you've had fire chase you and crown over your head... well it ain't funny. Even though I"ll end with LOL.

In Texas I"d be great with that. We have about 9 months of it.

I"ve seen 100s in all 12 months of the year... upper 90s on Christmas and New Years.. I used to be able to handle the heat, but its finally getting to me.

Jeff, I don't know how you take it. That's insane heat.

I don't deal with it well anymore honestly. Was 40 minutes in full fire gear around 92 the otehr day but humidity was upper 90s... cutting a guy out of his upside down car....

I saw stars by the time I got my gear off.

I overheat really easy lately.....

I'm ready to try 9 monhts of winter. LOL

The rain should help today. Hopefully there's an abundance of it. "Pouring" here as native Washingtonians would say. Just a shower to a midwesterner.

Once I got off the island it was raining to beat hell. Just some light sprinkles here but it looked like it was raining up in the foothills. The lower temperatures and rain was just what we needed. My lawn was turning brown and it's barely May.

Barely a sprinkle here in the south sound. Not even enough to call it rain.

Fireball, I've been fighting fire for over 20 years and lately in the last 4 years we've been seeing a trend that scares the hell out of us. Fires are covering twice as much ground in a given time period than has ever been recorded. This is something new and this type of fire behavior is something weve never encountered before.

Frankly it is something your going to want to pay pretty close attention to if you are one of those folks that lives in a fire prone area. With the right year and conditions I believe we are all going to see it lit up on a scale that dwarfs anything we've seen in our lifetime.

Shod

What's the cause?

Our whammy here is going to be bad, we had enough of a drought in 2011 that its finally killed billions of cedars. And cedars were and are everywhere. They are now dying/dead, falling over and contributing to the fuel. They burn hot and fast.

Once we get a bad enough fire to get away and into the brush, we are going to have an inferno like we've never seen. Usually the brush doesn't burn that great because of green/life/water/moisture... its the duff under that burns... until it gets all teh rest hot and dry enough.... IE slower than normal.

Not sure whats causing fast up there, but I know whats going to cause fast here.... I dread taht day.

The day in 2011 we were running grass trucks 45 mph plus across pastures trying to catch up to the head of the fire before it got away... it got away and what started around 2pm, by 10 pm had burned over 3000 acres... our largest county fire on record.

Unknown but they suspect logging in one of them as the area is being logged, or was logged recently.

Rost---The area these rather small fires are in dense forests. Predominantly Douglas fir, Hemlock (T. Heterophylla) and western red cedar.

Living in the same town as Fireball, we had the Biscuit Fire of 2003 or 04... that fire burned an area larger than the state of Connecticut... but the reason for the size of that fire was access... under the Clinton Administration and spearheaded by Cousin Al Gore... they had closed and let 'return to nature' a bunch of forest service roads... to "Wilderness" once again...

We had severe smoke to live thru around here for 6 weeks on that one... came thru an area burning last July coming back from New Mexico... smoke was so thick, it was almost as dark as night out at 4 in the afternoon, when I was coming down Highway 140 from Klamath Falls to Medford....

What's wrong with fire, other than it threatens people/homes/etc?

And that sucks... its hand lines or wait until a clearing or IF a dozer can get there.

We have a few areas like that around us amazingly. Though we have lots of oaks and then had lots of cedars.

I've no clue how doug fir or hemlock burns. Never seen that thanfully, though IIRC we used spruce top once to light up to al foil some halibut the pilots just brought in years ago in AK and I was amazed somewhat to see that top flare just like cedars do here.

You got it. Nothing. other than its threatening things. Things that used to not be here.

There are to many people in the world now, thats plain to see.

Fire is Nature way of getting rid of dead decaying wood and trash. You were never intended to build your home in a fire zone, so quit complaining if your home burns.

I don't see how it is "too many people" but rather the foolish policies of so many.

And if you don't have much fire for 6-7 years that dieback really crushes you when it does go up.

Jeff;
Good morning to you sir, I trust this finds you folks well on a still and yes again warm Sunday in May.

As one who has now lived for more than two dozen decades in an interface zone, perhaps I can throw out a couple thoughts on the matter - but as always they are no more than that.

After WWII we both began to expand our population creating the need for new housing developments and we began to get very, very good at fighting forest fires.

The new housing developments necessarily pushed into formerly forested areas and some areas allowed more logging than others in the development plans.

As well, lets not forget that each tree we can keep around acts as a heat absorbing unit in summer as well as providing shade, so there's a fine line we trod as to how much logging and underbrush removal we can do.

Then too, up into the early '2000's we were allowed to burn the built up pine needles and dead brush on our properties, but the air quality folks now say an emphatic no that practice.

Fire is of course good for natural cycles, but when we have increased fire loads such as you talk about - some areas here are at 7 times and more than there should be - then the resulting fire burns much hotter and kills more than it would have say 100 years ago.

The result then is that the plants which would usually come back after a forest fire do not. Sometimes this leaves a bit of a moonscape environment which among other things is really subject to water erosion when it does finally rain.

At our place we've limbed all the trees to a height of 8' to 10' around the structures and have removed as much dead antelope brush as is practical. The antelope brush burns dead green however, but it's also a major food source for the local mulies which call our yard home.

The summers in the mid '80's were hot and dry too, so we'll see what this summer brings and as always we'll strive to survive it one way or the other - we don't really have a choice in the matter in that regard, do we?

All the best to you folks this summer Jeff.

Dwayne

I am hoping like hell that this summer does not play out like last summer in eastern Washington and north Idaho. The air was bad for all but two or so weeks of my three months up there. My place is located in a pretty high risk area.

These fires were in the mountains and from my understanding no structures were threatened but the fear is always of it growing and spreading to nearby towns.

Rost, There are logging roads to access for ground attack but a lot of the suppression efforts center around air attack. Fixed and rotary wing assets allow for the application of a lot of water on the problem areas.

Fire is great for healthy forests but can be extremely destructive in dense and overgrown, liberally managed stands.

Too many folks in places they don't need to be.

I used to not be able to see a single house from our place.

It started 10 years ago. One house 400 yards out the front. Then another and so on. Now our 100 acres is sucky small and I can see 6 or more houses.

We used to be in the country. Its not that anymore.

Used to be rare to see traffic on the FM. But now you see it all day and all night.

But thats my personal problem.

Born 100 years to late and not in the right location and have not migrated yet.

The very last house, just a few weeks ago, bought part of an estate. Put a house in, has screaming kids, and about 400 yards off one of our fences. Right next to my best deer area, will see how they adapt, they always do.

But they cleared a nice area out front, and then a tiny nook in fairly dense woods.... yep put the house in the nook. Trees almost touching the roof.
And they have burn piles from clearing, mostly dead cedars, that are within 30-40 feet of existing brush... likely on the wrong day and time they'll burn the brush and the house down if they aren't smart.

Too many folks, moving into places where you have to respect mother nature or be prepared to loose it all in a blink, and nowdays its all someone elses fault and the .gov should pay....

The piss poor management can sterilize a forest when fire should have been a GOOD thing... it can just flat kill it off. Fuel loads to big and so on.

I've never been on a big fire where we had lots of aerial. We were on a 50 acre one once where by pure luck there was a big tanker, like a 135 or such, Im' not good with planes and it did kill the fire in place, I was impressed with those loads of retardant and the tiny lead plane leading the tanker into place.

But mostly here with have a rotary wing or two. They are good for saving structures some, and spot fire type issues, but we still end up having to doze a line or wait for it to get to a fightable defendable space.

One fire appears to have started in the recent clearcut (clear proof of mismanagement) along the drag line uphill. The one fire is in the same area as the huge Oso landslide that wiped out dozens of homes and killed dozens of people a few years back. Clearcutting steep hill sides lead to other problems downhill and downstream. That landslide was not caused by logging rather a perfect storm of conditions and over saturated soil. Clearcuts are great hunting because of the new growth spurred on by sunlight, so there's that. Otherwise I find clearcuts to be an ugly scar on the landscape.

Herein lies the only real problem, on both small and large scales. Liberal utopic thinking kills people and ecosystems every time.

Much of our place could burn - probably a long-term improvement. However, I would have to replace up to 40 miles of fence - and figure out how to do land payments with no income from the place.