You’ll be happy to know there are no fires burning near that part of the Gorge. The big one is east of Portland on the state line.
I took a trip into the Cascades this weekend, starting at Detroit Lake and finishing on Mt. Hood. The haze was so thick the sun looked red. Heck, the moon looked red. The car was covered in ash. From the lodge on Mt Hood, you should be able to see miles. I couldn’t even see much past the parking lot.
Back home in the Willamette Valley, it hasn’t improved much. It’s supposed to rain tonight. I’m hoping it helps with the fire fighting efforts and helps clear the air. Walking around, I definitely notice stinging eyes and throat.
Detroit Lake? The map shows a complex right north of there.
Yeah, the Warm Springs rez has a fire on it, it’s been burning for weeks now and they’ve mostly got it contained and are letting it burn itself out. The one that scared everyone was the Eagle Creek fire–it’s now joined the Indian Creek fire that’s been burning since July 4th, so the two together are at about 30K acres. Eagle Creek was scary AF there, moving 13 miles closer to Portland in 16 hours. The fire crews have been doing an amazing job protecting houses and historic buildings–so far they’ve only lost one home and a few outbuildings and the Gresham crew descended en masse to keep the Multnomah Falls lodge from burning. They issued Level 1 (Get Ready) evacuation orders for Troutdale, which is scary because that’s the dividing line between rural and suburban density.
The smoke has been really bad–it’s calmed down a bit today and we’re all hoping for rain. Our high pressure front is moving east past the Cascades, that pulls in cooler moister air from the Pacific and helps to dampen down the fires a bit. If we can get it hitting dew point up on the mountains that will help considerably. We could get some thunderstorms too, but those are a crapshoot. If they dump a bunch of rain it’s hooray! but if they just put down 10,000 lightning strikes that’s not gonna be good.
The other problem is that the fire has encroached a bit onto the Bull Run watershed, which supplies about a third of Portland’s water. If it gets contaminated we’ll have to fall back on well water and that will require some conservation measures, as the wells don’t have as much in them as Bull Run does. That’s the #2 priority for the firefighters, to keep the fire out of the watershed.
And they had to release a really huge number of fingerling salmon way too early but they’d have lost them for sure because the water intake for the hatcheries was clogging with ash. Good luck, tiny feesh! That’s gonna come back and bite us in a few years.
We were supposed to leave today for a long weekend in the mountain. We canceled it. Here at home south of Seattle it was pretty dark all day and felt like it was going to rain if I hadn’t known better. The light’s really strange, as well. I feel terrible for the people and animals who are losing their homes and their lives. The fairgrounds in Enumclaw are allowing people who’ve evacuated with livestock to stay there.
Evergreen state, my ass. August was the third hottest month in Seattle’s history and we’ve had something like .02" of rain the last few months. Please rain!
In my neck of the woods (North Idaho area and yes, it is called North Idaho, not northern Idaho), it’s been terrible for many days. I don’t think the AQI has dipped below 200 for the last five days. Luckily, the fires aren’t real close to where I live but they are all around us: WA, BC, MT, ID, OR (I’ve heard that it is the MT/Glacier smoke that is really hitting us).
And yes, please rain! It was a wet spring but once the rain stopped, it stopped! We had a slight misting of rain one day and that has been it since June.
I can’t wait for the day I can get back on a bicycle. This has been about the longest without riding for a couple years.
We got our rain — prit’ near a normal year’s worth — over the winter and spring. Which ironically* fed the current problem since all the moisture encouraged the vegetation to grow even more than usual, and when the high temps / low humidity hit all that vegetation promptly dried up and provided fuel for the fires.
*Forget gravity and dark matter: I came to the conclusion years ago that irony is the most powerful force in the universe.
If you want to see a crazy map this smoke map shows just how much smoke is being produced in BC and how far it is travelling. Right now it’s hazy here from a fire that’s about 500 miles away.
Wow.
There’s a feral cat rescue/TNR organization I follow, TinyKittens.com, located in Langley, BC that’s taken in a number of ferals rescued from the fires to relieve pressure on the local shelters – leave the more adoptable cats/kittens with them and take the hard cases.
Of course, given their stellar skills with ferals, they’ve tamed those rescues and have them socialized and ready for adoption. Some adults, some tweens, and some kittens.
Live feed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xAoAHgVr3w
Yes, there was ash everywhere. The fire crews were coming into town to eat, just covered in soot and debris. They were generally (literally) applauded, and looked pretty well worn out. There was a map up at the market, and it showed fires all around that area. We had planned to do some hiking and goofing off on the beach, but the smoke was so bad it was hard to even see the lake.
ETA: Forgot to mention that we got enough rain that the air is clearer. It still looks hazy, but it’s definitely less smoky, at least for now. I haven’t heard whether lightning strikes caused any new fires.