Smoke Is Bad (Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, Ketchum: rental, get credit, to live in)

[cleosmom]

Originally Posted by nowhereman427

Exactly wh ere is the smoke coming from?

From over half a dozen fires in Idaho and fires in other states.

[nm9stheham]

Here is an air quality map that alos shows all the fire locations in the US and Canada, and where the smoke is going. (I am not sure how accurate the smoke mapping is....)


https://fire.airnow.gov/#

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Originally Posted by nowhereman427

Exactly wh ere is the smoke coming from?

It depends upon which way the wind is blowing. We have fires all around us. The wind blows the smoke to us and when the wind changes and blows a different direction, we get smoke from a different fire.



We get smoke from Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, and Canada, depending upon which direction the wind is coming from. Lots of fires in Montana, too, producing lots of smoke.

[apple92680]

It's interesting...

If you read the California forums around this time last year, lots of people were saying how upset they were by the wildfire smoke and they were actually blaming California for it, and saying that they wanted to move to the Pacific Northwest or Texas, as if either place is somehow immune to the threat???

The Pacific Northwest has always been prone to fires, and Texas gets those massive prairie fires in dry years when the "dragon winds" blow through.

Yet, when fires break out in Texas or the Pacific Northwest, nobody blames the state of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana or Texas?

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by apple92680

It's interesting...

If you read the California forums around this time last year, lots of people were saying how upset they were by the wildfire smoke and they were actually blaming California for it, and saying that they wanted to move to the Pacific Northwest or Texas, as if either place is somehow immune to the threat???

The Pacific Northwest has always been prone to fires, and Texas gets those massive prairie fires in dry years when the "dragon winds" blow through.

Yet, when fires break out in Texas or the Pacific Northwest, nobody blames the state of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana or Texas?

I just read in this morning's paper that, so far, Idaho has a typical fire year right now. 65 fires is typical for this state in this month of the year.

The thing most outsiders don't realize is Idaho (along with the other intermountain West states) always catches fire in the summers.
The fires don't ever make the daily news because Idaho is so well prepared to put the fires out before they become giants.

But this summer's heat and dryness could easily overwhelm our best responses to wildfire, and we are still very vulnerable until we get more moisture.

A week of high winds could light us up in another Big Burn, so all of us have to be very aware of fire this summer.

[nowhereman427]

We just got the smoke here today.

[nm9stheham]

This is a hard read... but it is a study of very long term fire in the western US. What I did not know was that after a significant increase of fires in the 1800's, the numbers of fires dropped a lot in the 20th century, creating what is called a fire deficit, and the recent few decades of increase is in response to that. It also seems to say that human impacts on the forests in the last 2 centuries have grown to match the effects of climate.


https://www.pnas.org/content/109/9/E535

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

This is a hard read... but it is a study of very long term fire in the western US. What I did not know was that after a significant increase of fires in the 1800's, the numbers of fires dropped a lot in the 20th century, creating what is called a fire deficit, and the recent few decades of increase is in response to that. It also seems to say that human impacts on the forests in the last 2 centuries have grown to match the effects of climate.


https://www.pnas.org/content/109/9/E535

Yup.
The 1970s and 1980s were both cooler decades than the 1950s and 60s.

Those dates are generalized; weather doesn't follow the calendar closely at all.
Forests still broke out in fire too, but just not as often and with smaller fires.

Trying to predict fire outbreaks in the entire western region is never going to be anything close to precise. The terrain out here is so varied and goes to such extremes that one area could be close to fire-proof, while another area 50 miles away could be fire-prone.

In those 20 years I mentioned above there never was a summer like this one, but they can always happen.
The spring of 1988 was dry, following a light winter, and though the summer wasn't as hot as it is now, it was warm and dry enough to light Yellowstone up.

That fire became the largest the park suffered in the 20th century. Part of the reasons it became so large was the policy back then of letting the parks burn to take out all the accumulated deadfall, but the other big reason was the warm, dry, windy summer.

Together, the two combined, causing super-fires to form so fast they were beyond the Park Service's ability to control them.

West Yellowstone could have become another Paradise or Greenwood, as the town lies right on the border of the park, but the town was saved when every farmer in SE Idaho with irrigation pipe to spare went up and literally irrigated the fires that were burning around the town n 3 sides were extinguished.

Other farmers brought up plows, backhoes and bulldozers and cut fire lines that extended into the park boundaries. That was against federal policy, but since they helped save the town, no one complained.

I was a proud Idahoan that summer. Those guys showed the same neighborly cooperation to pitch in and help out everyone showed when the Teton Dam broke in 1976.

After the flood was over, dozens of construction outfits from other states came in, hoping to cash in fast on the disaster, but the locals already had begun rebuilding.
We were taking care of it ourselves, thanks for coming, but we've got this one under control.

Most of the outsiders left empty-handed. Neighbors were already helping each other out.

That was the most smoky summer of all. The air in Idaho Falls was so thick visibility when driving was down to about a block's length on our streets. The days were as dark as twilight and the sun was purple. Ashfall from the fires would often cover everything that was outside.
The entire Upper Snake River Valley must have been one huge pool of smoke.

[forsheamountain]

Same conditions in southern Utah. I had hoped to go hiking today but settled for the indoor walking track at Southern Utah University.

[Terryj]

We just finished our motorcycle ride through Yellowstone, Glacier National Park and through Idaho, this was a trip that was on my bucket list. Didn't run into to much smoke, there was a bit in Columbus, MT due to a fire just southwest of town, but other than that it was okay. Our trip through Idaho was awesome, the best part (IMO) was Northern Idaho what a beautiful part of the world.
The worst smoke we hit was in Oregon, from La Pine south to 138 wasn't really bad but when we hit the Cascade Range it was thick smoke all the way into Medford, Ore. I'm so tired of the smoke every summer for the last five years here in the Rogue Valley, my wife is ready to move. Maybe to Idaho !!!!!