Rolling Western U.S. Is On Fire / Wildfires Thread

did you see https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/climate/salt-lake-city-climate-disaster.html?

yes

paywalled though

the word that comes to mind is 'desertification'

Alaska is on fire.

https://fire.airnow.gov/#

not great

hope my friends in Oakridge are OK, they got an evac order

i have a hunch that this year we're gonna get epic flooding then epic fires.

It’s El Niño so it’s certainly going to be warmer

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/471/227/dd0.png

thread is about wildfires not flooding but i need to put this somewhere

29" SWE. As Utah officially surpasses the estimated 1952 levels, those concerned with flooding can learn more about risks and other state resources by going to the @UtahDPS emergency management page: https://t.co/gfkjF2yFlE #utwx pic.twitter.com/jHQQ62QUXr

— NRCS Utah (@NRCS_Utah) April 4, 2023

All the rainfall/storms will definitely lead to more fuel by the summertime - grasses and underbrush, and fallen trees and limbs

But the rain may have helped some of the drought-stricken pines

doubt i'll see this much snow again in my lifetime.

hope you are not in a danger area for snow melt flooding

i think we're far enough away from the creek. we'll see how bad it gets.

Canada too, although maybe that’s a different thread.

this'll do for now

we've already had two in Oregon within 50 miles of us

Quite visible and smellable in Brooklyn this evening

I forgot to look up but my daughter told me about the big red sun. And a friend of ours that hasn’t been posting recently just told me about all the smoke in Ottawa.

Actually we can smell it now too here in Queens.

yeah i mean it was shortsighted of me to limit this to the western us

Smoke smell not quite as unpleasant as what it was in downtown Brooklyn right after 9/11 but why compare?

Feeling it on my eyes. Not sure if psychosomatic, doubt it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/toronto-ottawa-covered-smoke-wildfires-2023-06-06/

The Canadian capital of Ottawa, which neighbors Quebec, was covered in haze on Tuesday morning, with air quality in category 10+, the worst level on Environment Canada's Air Quality Health Index, indicating "very high risk".

ottowa, welcome

Lots of headlines saying nyc’s air quality was “the worst in the world” this morning.

I’m caught a bit flat footed… not sure what to do other than close up the apartment, keep the dog walks brief and hang out inside.

It’s weird how it wasn’t apparent to me walking around Chinatown all afternoon but taking the dog out an hour later was yikes.

I didn’t notice until this evening.

ah ye, finally, been long looking forward to my first fire season wherein I have one lung

Ugh, sorry.

looking a little better in Montreal this morning, but the last two days were p depressing (not as bad as Ottawa though)

This explains why the early mornings have looked so apocalyptic here of late.

Sund4r told me he drove back from Toronto to Ottawa the other day and basically was welcomed in the middle by giant cloud of black smoke into which he drove. Had to wear a mask in his car. And then in his apartment.

Well now it’s drifted down to DC.

Air quality in Ottawa back up to 10+, highest possible risk.

It was surreal walking around my neighborhood yesterday (in Montreal), just smelled like light campfire smoke, so not really unpleasant to me though obviously unhealthy. Today seems less bad so far at least, I guess the bit of rain we had this night helped.

imo this blows

Seems like the next plume is coming into nyc now

it's pretty weird to watch the rest of the country experience our Oregon summer world, been like this on and off here for 4-5 years now

pro tip: get P100 masks, you want those small particulates filtered

We have N95s aplenty…

ha yes, everyone does now, but do try to get some P100s if you need to be outside in it for an extended period

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1FzbmpFyaw

Is it even worth bothering with a surgical mask, as some are doing?

I don't think so. I think you need at least an N95 to filter out particulates?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/us/masks-wildfire-smoke-air-quality.html

Went out to get groceries just now (picked the wrong time but I've been sick all week) and felt like the dog in the "This is fine" cartoon.

it's pretty weird to watch the rest of the country experience our Oregon summer world, been like this on and off here for 4-5 years now

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Wednesday, June 7, 2023 6:36 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i wouldn't wish smokey air on anyone, but yeah, from a western pov it's a little jarring to see "this sucks baaad" in 2023. not like in some perverse bragging tone or anything. just a note that many parts of the country that don't have many posters to this message board have been living this reality for quite some time. my sympathies to everyone dealing with this right now. the good news is weather patterns change and the smoke always moves somewhere else. then moves back to you. then gets worse next year.

i'm super glad we'll see some media hand-wringing and rationalization about it in the coming weeks though.

it does suck bad

I’m in the Baltimore area. This has happened before, not pretty rarely in my memory.

(The only other time I remember it was in the Austin area a decade or so back when the city of Bastrop was on fire for weeks.)

I moved to Montreal from Oregon 9 years ago. So, I left before the real bad summers started, but I did experience fires while there, including waking up on vacation in Bend one morning to the surreal sight of midsummer snow that I realized after a confused minute was falling ash. There have also been plenty of wildfires in Quebec before this year. What's freaking me out is that it's only June