We are planning a Gila National Forest and Silver City camping/hiking trip next spring. Really nice area to go within one-day striking distance of Denver by car. Guess we'll wait on the impact of this one, and depressing to constantly see this happen to places you love.
Legit can’t remember the last time it rained here so not surprising at all (I’m on the other side of the city at least)
Been sitting on campus reading all morning and saw some smoke rising up behind the building I'm near Sure enough. Looks like this one could be bad with the extreme wind and lack of humidity Spoiler
This is the website we use to keep track of the wildfires if anyone is interested. Updated regularly. https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/
Another couple good ones that go well with InciWeb for situational awareness https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/ https://maps.nwcg.gov/sa
So, I know nothing about this sort of thing, being from parts of the country where it rains all the time. Are most of these guys the result of bad land management (not clearing brush, etc.) or something else? I'm always curious if they are natural or not.
It's very dry, no humidity and lots of wind. So conditions are just perfect for fires regardless of the efforts of forestry folks They've arrested someone from Louisiana for starting the Pipeline Fire. Seems most are the result of shitty people
A lot of it at least used to be brush buildup because the feds would suppress any and every fire they could instead of letting natural burns happen. I figure this is still a problem in some parts of the west, but circumstances can vary. Things are just getting hotter and drier too. Man made error still plays a role; the New Mexico fire over by Jemez Springs was the Bureau of Land Management performing a prescribed burn (and not informing locals in the process). Given that we haven’t had rain since March(?), the burn unsurprisingly spun out of control pretty quickly in tandem with warmer temps.
Well it’s Arizona, and it’s just a natural phenomenon to get fires like this. The size of some recently is a two fold mix of lack of fire on the ground and a general warming of the climate/ drought. Source: Firefighter from CA
Sounds like all the New Mexico fires were Fed burn piles that weren’t 100% out and jumped lines a couple days later.
Doesn't seem like he intended to burn the forest down but clearly ignored the no burn signs Started with his toilet paper apparently
Feels like invasive species also contribute to these fires. Thankfully it doesn't seem like the pine beetle is killing forests in the SW like it is in WYO. There are huge chunks of forests in Wyoming that are just fire fuel now that the beetle has destroyed so much land
Lol it’s funny hearing peoples opinions on this issue. Most prescribed burns in California for instance got shot down more from regional air quality management districts. The smaller 20- 30 acre maybe 100 acre prescribed burn projects we would get done were good for trying to create buffers to give us extra time on initial attack to wrap a fire or create a larger fire break. But they do nothing for the larger part of the forest. People didn’t want the smoke of a larger fire wafting through their town. Fortunately public perception is starting to change a bit on this issue.
Sounds like my favorite trailhead was spared. These elite firefighters are such bad asses, god bless them
I believe they got hit pretty hard with lightning this year. Its another variable with climate change to track and see, much harder to fight.
Today is the 9 year anniversary of the death of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots on the Yarnell Hill Fire Also, if you're ever in Boise, take a visit to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation: https://wffoundation.org/
if you have interest this is a company we use for Intel on fires, it’s pretty impressive and cool to see imo (Turn your sound on)