Scary

[liralen]

The fires are so big, now, they're affecting the weather.

On the way home from dinner at a friend's house, the sky above our house was pitch black and the lightning was flash-banging, cloud-to-cloud balls of lightning, rakes that reached from the heavens to the earth, and sheet lightning curtaining the sky as far as we could see. Thunder rumbled and banged and made Jet cuddle in closer as he was going to sleep, and then the rain started falling.

Turns out that the particles from the fires are, in essense, seeding the late-afternoon/evening clouds that usually form on hot summer days. And in the trail of the smoke the rain started to fall. So we're getting not only rain, but something of a temperature break and, hopefully, it'll help out the firefighters. Rather than a week of 80-90+ degree weather, they're now predicting mid-70s!

There's been more than 80,000 acres burned, the big fires are only 5% contained, usually around structures that the firefighters are trying to save. The weather, today, is less gusty than yesterday, so there's more possibility of air support out in the more remote areas of the fire. Part of the problem is that out in the remote areas it's hard to simply *get* there as there's so much fire perimeter, now.

Oof.

Comments

[clauclauclaudia]

Following this from afar, I am simply astounded.

I assume my ex-boyfriend Al is out there on the fires, but he hasn't yet finished catching me up on his life over the last couple years (we just got back in touch via e-mail) so I'm not sure he's still doing that.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Good luck to him, if he is. It amazes me, too.

The area that the fires have already burned are bigger than the whole of metro Denver. It boggles the mind when the comparisons are to things I have experienced...

Fires

[tryptophan.livejournal.com]

The sheer size is astounding; last I heard, the one in Northern Alberta had reached 2300 sq kms. How people battle that and deal with that amazes me. With the AB one, what amazes me is that no one has lost a life or a home yet...

Re: Fires

[liralen.livejournal.com]

If it's like the Colorado ones, it's in remote areas, which is part of why the blaze hasn't been fought that hard. And where there is fighting of the fire line it's usually right where the houses are. They're pretty smart here, they haven't risked people on the front line, unless there's a structure that's threatened. Most of the firefighters are trenching the areas that are already burned, and making sure that when the wind changes direction and blows the fire back into itself, it'll just die from lack of fuel.

That's why the statistics say, here, that is, that they only have a tiny percentage under control, because, on the most part, they've been smart and haven't been doing direct combat. Whew.