It was about 1pm on an extremely hot, dry day in August of 1990 on remote lake beach outside of Maple Ridge, BC. The beach was sandy with dry driftwood, bark, sticks and logs of various lengths littered along it. We were in the middle of a drought, so the conditions were dry for weeks.
I noticed tiny little wisps of smoke rising up from smouldering points on various pieces of wood on the beach – there were literally hundreds, maybe a few thousand of them. None of these smouldering spots appeared to start actually start fires.
The smouldering spots were about an eighth of an inch in diameter, a quarter inch at most, and looked as though one had rubbed two sticks together and generated enough heat to cause a tiny little bit of smoke, but without any flame whatsoever.
No less than a dozen other people saw this phenomenon, but no one I have described this scene to since has ever heard of this happening before. Many questioned whether I was talking about steam, mist etc, but I can assure you this absolutely was smoke.
Has anyone ever heard of this happening elsewhere before or can you hazard a guess as to what might have been the cause?
I’m not an expert, but I think that if there were a thousand smoldering spots, there would have been a strong and unmistakeable odor of burning and you probably would have noticed the smell before you saw anything.
I’ve heard from several farmers (around North Dakota and Montana) of hay and straw decomposing when it’s bundled up or baled, and actually catching on fire. Apparently, as the hay/straw decomposes, it generates heat, which smoulders long enough for flame to break out. Apparently, this is a big reason why hay/straw needs to be kept dry when it’s bundled up. . .
Is it possible the washed up driftwood and sticks were packed tightly enough to actually start smouldering?
Is it possible there was a fire somewhere relatively close and some burning embers had floated on the wind and landed on the beach? Where they hit driftwood, you might see small burning spots, where they hit sand, you wouldn’t see much at all.
were these bits burning on the top of the debris, or perhaps directly at ground level? I have seen fires burn underground at the root level that appear as fairly widely seperated smoking spots in the earth. Sometimes quite a lot of such spots could appear in a large enough underground fire.
