Wildfires in Canada and Montana

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earlene

Grandmother & Soaper
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I hope all our Canadian and Montanan members and their loved ones are safe and not affected by the wildfires in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and Montana. I hope everyone is safe.

Yesterday I kept smelling the smoke and wondering where it was coming from. I briefly saw a bit of haze, but at first thought it was a bit of fog. Late last night when my husband came home from work he told me the smoke had actually affected the visibility at the airport where he works.
 
:???: Floods in the south, fires in the North. I guess nature will do as it will. It is good to see people pitching in and helping one another.

"...Hope is not the absence of tragedy, my friend. It is the conviction that tragedy can be endured. Hope is the spark in you that is not subdued in the face of the vast and callous indifference of the universe. Hope is that which is not shattered by hardship." (Travis Beacham)
 
Hope everyone is safe as well!

There are so many fires around right now.
I live in the Bay Area in CA and it's been so smokey and hazey the last few days. Apparently the fires up in northern CA have been causing all the smoke.
 
I hope all our Canadian and Montanan members and their loved ones are safe and not affected by the wildfires in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and Montana. I hope everyone is safe.

British Columbia is on fire as well. The largest fire in our history is now over 180,000 hectares (in the interior of BC). There's a fire just outside of Kelowna, between here and Big White Ski Resort, that's 454 hectares and only partially contained. Another one has just crossed the border from Washington State into BC. We've been dealing with smoke around here for a month already and it shows no signs of easing.

This has been THE most destructive fire season on record. We haven't had rain in almost three months and the heat wave continues.

Depending on the air currents, we have smoky days and clear days; today's a clear day, thankfully.

Here's a map that shows chemicals in the air. All those black spots are active fires; the green circle is where I am (Kelowna). The white lines show air currents. For anyone interested, here's the website for the map, with several different overlays (a fascinating website): https://earth.nullschool.net/#curre...raphic=-113.89,52.14,1096/loc=-120.414,50.182

ScreenShot.jpg
 
We spent a week a couple years ago surrounded by many wildfires but those are massive (forests compared to our canyons). The destruction is heartrending, plus the constant need to always be on guard and ready to move in a moment's notice...difficult stuff Misschief. It's a weird kind of terror to walk outside your house and see waves of black smoke rolling up your road. How are you coping?
 
Cool maps, Mischief. Glad you got some smoke relief, even if just for a bit. We're surrounded by fires too (in western Montana), but somehow our house seems strategically tucked away from the worst of it. My throat is pretty sore tonight though, and I'm hoping for a reprieve again tomorrow. Small price I guess considering we're not likely to be evacuated like a few of our friends have been.
 
CaraBou, we had that last week. I woke up with such a sore throat that I thought I had come down with a cold. It was very smoky, though. Glad you hear you're not likely to be evacuated. Nor are we, thankfully.

Lenarenee, we're fine where we are. Depending on the winds, we get a lot of smoke and amazing sunsets but we're in no danger here. It's just scary reading or hearing about another fire in our area. And the one that started yesterday, across the lake? It's now grown to 100 hectares and people are being put under evacuation order and/or alert.

This fire season isn't done yet, sadly.
 
I am so glad to read that you are all okay and not in imminent danger.

Since moving away from California 12 years ago, I don't see those kinds of wildfires, forest fires, flooding, mudslides, caved in roads, earthquakes, etc. that I grew up with and spent most of my life seeing or hearing about several times a year. Not that I don't love my native state; I do and will always be fond of the Pacific Ocean, the redwood trees, the beaches, the mountains, the forests, and even the deserts in California. But here I just don't see as many of those natural disasters and forget about the daily pollution problems and air quality advisories, etc. (Of course, overall, the air quality in California has improved immensely since I was in my 30's and 40's. I visit often and it's not anywhere near as bad as it used to be, so that's really fabulous.)

I was never in great fear of earthquakes even though I did see extensive damage caused by several, but that's probably because one can become somewhat desensitized to these things when they happen all the time where you live. Here I found straight winds were something totally new to me (never even heard of them when I lived in California) and I've been fortunate in regards to tornadoes (not been too close to many so far.) Hurricanes don't happen here, but I've been close to some when traveling near the Gulf Coast a few times.

Man oh man. So many natural disasters are going on right now all over the world. It feels as though they are increasing exponentially, but I don't really know if that's the case, or it's just that I am more globally aware than when I was young.
 
I was listening to a radio program this morning about water and our relationship to it. The guest was a Dutch water expert (and the Dutch have really learned how to live with water and its foibles) and he did mention that the waters in the Gulf of Mexico are warmer than usual (global warming and all) and that did play into the severity of Hurricane Harvey. Here, we're having our worst fire year on record. Climate experts are saying that global warming is contributing to that as well.

Practically speaking, we're just hoping for some rain and there's none in the immediate forecast.
 
Strange yellow-tinged sky for several hours now coming through my windows. At first I thought, 'yellow skies are supposed to precede a tornado' (or so I've heard) but this has lasted for at least the past 6 hours. So I looked it up and it's attributed to the smoke from the fires still going on in Canada and the West Coast. Wow! I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
 
I'm in the Idaho panhandle and the smoke is so thick today, you can't see more than a block away. Luckily none of the fires are close so we aren't in danger from them. We need rain so bad here in the west.
 
Around here, all the evacuation orders and alerts have been canceled. We're now in clean up mode. Though there was loss of property and livestock, I don't think there was any loss of human life. That is something to be very grateful for.
 
Strange yellow-tinged sky for several hours now coming through my windows. At first I thought, 'yellow skies are supposed to precede a tornado' (or so I've heard) but this has lasted for at least the past 6 hours. So I looked it up and it's attributed to the smoke from the fires still going on in Canada and the West Coast. Wow! I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Earlene, it's green skies before a tornado, but even though I lived in Morgan county for years, I was actually pretty rare for me to see a green sky. And I love storms for sat on the screen porch many evenings watching them move in!

And the green - really is a kind of sickly green cast.
 
Around here, all the evacuation orders and alerts have been canceled. We're now in clean up mode. Though there was loss of property and livestock, I don't think there was any loss of human life. That is something to be very grateful for.

Glad for that, but a long, long process.
 
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