Good Morning!!!! 76F @ 5:00AM. Plentiful sunshine. High 101F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.
On a fire related weather note, for the past few days the Dixie Fire has generated a pyrocumulonimbus cloud overhead, and yesterday it had two of them going at once. For the first time, one of them generated lightning strikes, but no word yet if that started additional fires. Too much smoke to tell, but an overnight overflight with an IR equipped airplane was scheduled.
Speaking of Dixie, as of last night it had grown another 10,000 acres, to a little more than 40,000. Still spreading north, but also east and west. CalFire is cutting containment lines, and contingency lines behind those. More evacuations were ordered in the immediate area, and warnings went out for the Lake Almanor area ten miles to the north. They're not very optimistic about being able to stop it at this point, as the forecast calls for more of the same wind and temperature wise.
Smoke wise, the Tamarak Fire near Lake Tahoe also reached 40,000 acres, the Sugar Fire in northeastern California has grown to a little more than 100,000 acres, while Oregon's Bootleg fire topped 300,000 acres yesterday. The
Inciweb site is helpful in keeping track of them all. Smoke here the past few mornings was so thick there was no sun, red or otherwise. It was like being in a very heavy fog bank, without the dampness.
By late afternoon the wind had blown the smoke away and it was safe to go outside again. By 5PM the fire cloud was well established, and was visible again from the front porch. What a monster!
Many of the aircraft fighting the fire are using nearby Chico and Oroville airports for reloading fuel and retardant. This is a flight of three Chinooks, I think flown by National Guardsmen.
This Blackhawk, also a National Guard 'copter, was flyin' pretty low for some reason.
This is a newer Boeing twin rotor. Several of these are on the fire.
This is a screen shot from the FlightTrader24 website showing a DC10 VLAT run targeting the ridge west of Bucks Lake. It's based out of McClellen Air Force Base near Sacramento, and gets one drop per run. It carries a lot, but also takes a long time to make a trip. Two smaller jets, one an MD85, and another 4 engine job, are in and out of Chico in a half hour. Even smaller S2 turbo props are using Chico as well. The don't hold nearly as much, but there are four of them, they're very maneuverable, and they can make drops the larger planes can't. The helios can stay on site a long time because they're dipping water out of nearby lakes and rivers. With all of that, though, it's still not enough to put the fire out, and barely enough to slow it down.
I was running out of places to find the leak in the smaller water line when I tested the two pipe joints for the pressure gauge. Both were leaking. Tightening one stopped it, I had to redo the Teflon tape on the other to get it to seal. I'll know this morning if that's the last of it.
Talked to a vendor for the Ethernet extenders yesterday, and got an order in. More than I wanted to pay, but I'd rather that than get a cheap price and be fussing with it when it breaks.
A news story broke yesterday that PG&E filed a report with the CPUC revealing that a tree falling into a power line is the likely cause of the Dixie Fire. PG&E stock fell another 6% yesterday.
