Smoke in the air

[oosik]

I know exactly how you felt grsthegreat. My heart almost stopped when I saw that wildfire - seven years ago - burn so very close to my property. The wind was propelling "fire bombs" up to a quarter mile ahead of the burning front.

At the last minuet, the wind shifted and gave the firefighter the chance they needed to extinguish the blaze.

 

[ponytug]

I feel for you, too. We have had too many fires get to the property line or close to it, in the last decade. As many of them were grass rather than forest fires, the burn areas were ready to go the next year, resetting the clock.

It has definitely changed our land use practices. We no longer let pastures go to seed in the spring ungrazed. The fire risk is just too high. I will pay someone to reseed eventually if I have to.

We have also fire hardened the house in lots of ways, but I am not under any illusions that the house is "fire safe". I have seen too many videos.

We just had a huge smoke event two days ago. It turned out the fire was a few miles away, but somehow the wind was just perfect and in less than an hour the air went from 15 mile visibility to a mile or so. All the neighbors were all a little twitchy until we found the location of the fire.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Hay Dude]

Smoke on the Water was a great tune by Deep Purple. Still like to fire that one up when lifting weights.
We are seeing some smoke in the air at Rocky Mountain National Park, but everyone has been saying it’s the clearest it’s been in a while.

 

[KWentling]

We have the smoke here too. It's going to be like this until the snow puts the fires out. This morning our smoke is probably mostly local as we have a couple of fires pretty close. 5300 acre fire 50 miles west and the Poverty Flats fire in Montana at 84 square miles as of yesterday. A couple of fires in the Big Horns too.

In March of 2009 we had a grass fire start at a sub station 5 or 6 miles south of us that was driven by a 40 mph wind. Unbelievable how fast that fire got here. I saw the smoke, and a few minutes later saw the flame front. Went out and got on the old 830 Case with the 8' back blade and started a fire line until the smoke got so bad I had to quit. My fire line reinforced by a county grader stopped it a couple of hundred yards south of the yard, but it burned up both sides of our property and around 2 of the neighbors houses. The fire dept got here in time to save those houses from damage. We had fence to fix after the fire and livestock to get back into their respective pastures as we had opened gates so they could get out of the way. That 40 mph wind blew in a spring snow storm the next day and we had 4' snow drifts to contend with. I'd rather put up with the smoke than be dealing directly with the fire.

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

It was pretty bad in Bismarck today. Visibility down to less than a mile. Can't go outside without smelling smoke.

 

[oosik]

I've got light smoke here this afternoon. I'll be turning on the fans as soon as the outside temperature drops. 95F @ 7:55 pm.

 

[grsthegreat]

I think you better invest in central air .....heat will probibly be the norm for us in future years.

 

[cqaigy2]

Have the fans going this morning pulling in cool 60F Stayed pretty warm all evening yesterday.

 

[grsthegreat]

nasty smoke in air today. viability maybe 1/2 block

 

[oosik]

So much for the good times. It's 97F and smoky here. Predicted to be 100+ later today.