Idiots Who Want YouTube Clicks Are Interfering With CA Wildfire Fight With Drones

Don't fly a drone over a wildfire or any other disaster unless you are intent
on hurting people are making property damage worse. Idiots are flying
drones over California fires, grounding firefighter aerial effotrts.

Apparently, to some people a greater number of getting themselves more clicks on YouTube and other social media is more important than firefighters' efforts to save life and property.

That's the only conclusion I can draw from an article on the Weather Channel site that reports of people flying drones above wildfires in California.  

Drones have interfered with firefighting operations in California at least 19 times so far this year, says The Weather Channel, citing other media soures like the Los Angeles Times. 

The Weather Channel offers this illustration during the Maria fire in southern California on Friday.

"A Ventura County Fire Department helicopter pilot radioed in at 3:19 a.m. local time to report that a drone was flying above the flames, presumably to capture photos or video of the dramatic scene below, the Los Angeles Times reported. The aerial fight against the wildfire was immediately stopped and aircraft remained grounded for at least 45 minutes."

I'm not inherently against flying drones to capture images of disasters or other weather drama.  If you can do it with permission from authorities, in a way in which  you know it won't interfere with operations, then it's fine.

Drones are actually helpful in disasters, if they're run by authorized people, such as emergency personnel, police, firefighters and rescue services. The trick is, they coordinate things so there's no trouble.

Drones can help emergency managers assess structural damage, where relief supplies are most needed, and the location of people that need help. Here in Vermont, State Police will be using drones for things like crime scene investigations, car crash reconstructions and search and rescue, including during weather disasters, reports VTDigger.  Drones will make these activities much more efficient.

Many legitimate news organizations also use drones, and there's nothing wrong with that, because they check with authorities first to make sure they're not screwing things up.

Firefighters themselves use drones to track the path of wildfires and assess damage. The difference is that everything's coordinated.  The helicopter and water dropping aircraft know where those firefighter drones are, and the firefighter drone operators know where the aircraft are. So it works.

Firefighters just don't know where the drones are that people send up to get cool shots of the disaster.

This type of thing keeps happening. Drones interfered with relief operations during the aftermath of Category 5 Hurricane Michael in the Florida panhandle last year. The same thing happened with drones in the Carolinas after Hurricane Florence. 

I would like to think the amateurs whose drones interfere with emergency operations just are clueless and don't know the terrible effects they're having.  But I'm afraid some of them do know and just don't care.  After all, it's not the drone operator's grandparents stuck in their hilltop home as the flames approach.  It's not their own home burning down. So the logic is, who cares, it's not affecting me.

The solution, of course, is to make it affect these drone operators. I hope these drone operators amid the California wildfires are caught and made a very public example of through aggressive criminal prosecution.

That might make the wannabe YouTube storm chasing stars think twice before sending their drones up.

California Fires, Texas Snow: Another Oddball Week

Amarillo, Texas got its first snowfall of the season yesterday, before
we in Vermont have gotten anything substantial

So far this week, I've talked about, among other things, wildfires in California and the prospects for snow, or lack thereof in the near future here in Vermont.

Today, the news is still full of wildfires and snow.

I'll start with the less disastrous stuff first.  Texas and Oklahoma have managed to get a bunch of snow before we here in Vermont have gotten any.  Yes, it's snowed on the peaks of the Green Mountains, but most of us Vermonters have not seen anything yet.  

Boy, the Texas Panhandle sure did, though. Amarillo, Texas picked up 2.6 inches of snow. It occasionally fell heavily, with thunder and lightning, winds gusting past 40 mph and occasional near whiteout conditions. A town in far western Oklahoma reportedly picked up nine inches.

Snow in the Texas Panhandles is of course rare this time of year, but not unheard of. As CNN reports, Amarillo once got measureable snow as early as September 29, 1984. The earliest one inch or greater snow there was on October 15, 1970.

Amarillo sits at about 3,600 feet in elevation. So somewhat like mile-high Denver, Colorado, it is often hot and dry, but under certain conditions the relatively high elevation can bring enough cold for seemingly out of season snows.

CALIFORNIA FIRES

People fleeing through fire and live ashes during wildfires
in northern California on Thursday.

The big news is how things are going from bad to worse in California. A fast-spreading blaze broke out in the hills above the California wine country, north of San Francisco late Wednesday or early Thursday.

That fire has destroyed an as yet undetermined number of homes. KQED says CalFire is estimating 49 structures lost so far. About 2,000 people have been evacuated.

Winds have temporarily died down in northern California, but the worst is yet to come. Over the weekend, extremely strong winds and low humidity will make for a critical fire risk.  Winds could gust to over 45 mph in the valleys and 75 mph in the mountains.   This is certainly a recipe for disaster.  The conditions will be similar to 2017, when a wildfire chewed through a large section of Santa Rosa, California.  
 
Pacific Gas & Electric, which cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses to help prevent fires from falling power lines, plans to do so again on a larger scale this weekend. The thought is if the wind breaks power lines, they won't cause fires because no electricity will be flowing.

In southern California, another fire, called the Tick Fire, is burning through canyons north of Los Angeles. It kept spreading early this morning amid gusty winds and jumped the 14 Freeway, prompting more evacuations. Several buildings have burned and the fire is far from contained.

The chances of high winds this weekend are slightly less in southern California than in northern parts of the state, but the risk is still real.  It's turning out to be another ugly fire season in California.

Fire And Ice: Videos Show Destructive CA Wildfires, Dakota Blizzard

Big California wildfires yesterday destroyed dozens of homes and
killed two people.

I was hoping, against reality actually, that maybe California would escape destructive wildfires for once this year.

As we've seen on the news, that wasn't to be. Wildfires yesterday killed two Californians, destroyed probably a few dozen homes and forced 23,000 people to evacuate.

It's not over yet, but winds are forecast to decrease, which might give firefighters the upper hand with these blazes. 

Some videos.

Dramatic overview from ABC News



The second half of this video is especially scary with flames, tons of embers and strong winds blasting through a southern California neighborhood:



Meanwhile, an incredible blizzard for this time of year hit North Dakota and southern Manitoba, Canada.

More than two feet of snow has piled up in some spots. Winds have gusted to 60 mph, causing huge drifts and closing highways.

As CBC reports, leaves were still on trees, so the heavy, wet snow has caused lots of damage to those trees. It'll take a long time to pick this mess up. Worse, wheat hasn't been harvested yet, so those crops are lost.

This view, I think in Winnipeg, Canada shows the effects of snow when leaves are on the trees. The trees that had already lost their leaves seem to be weathering the storm well. Trees with leaves, not so much:



Here's an entertaining video narrated by a North Dakota gentleman who regrettably left his 30-pack of Busch Light beer in his picking truck in the midst of yesterday's blizzard.  Yeah, I don't know how he can even stand drinking that icky stuff, but whatever.

We still get to see the midwinter like, very windy and snowy conditions as he retrieves his prize. Remember, this is October:

Very Scary Paradise, California Bodycam Video Emerges. How Did They Survive?

Image from a terrifying body cam video of people
trying to escape the Paradise, California wildfire earlier this month. 

I was terrified just watching the video at the bottom of this post and you will be, too.

The video is body cam footage from Butte County Sheriff's Deputy Aaron Parmlet as he searched for four nurses he needed to help evacuate from Feather River Hospital as this month's deadly wildfire overtook Paradise, California.

The wildfire is now the deadliest in the United States in decades, claiming at least 88 lives.

There's still trouble going on around Paradise. Heavy rains yesterday led to flash floods, debris flows and new evacuations.

In the video, Parmlet thought he was going to be one of those victims, so he turned on the body cam to record what he believed might be his last moments. 

The fire killed his patrol car and he was forced to go on foot. He and other evacuees can barely be seen in the thick smoke. Fire burned everywhere and great gusts of embers engulfed people. With the choking smoke and heat, I don't know how any of the people in the video lived.

Happy spoiler alert: They did survive. Eventually a tractor emerged from the smoke. Parmlet got the attention of the driver with his flashlight and they used the tractor to get out of what was certainly hell on Earth.

Here's the video:

Another Cataclysmic Wildfire In California: Signs Of Climate Change

A home burns in Paradise, California as an intense wildfire
swept through. Photo by Noah Berger/AP

Another autumn, another terrible, unprecedented wildfire.

As you might have seen on the news, an explosive wildfire charged through parts of northern California yesterday and last night.
While there are often wildfires out west, this one was yet another example of fire behavior people haven't seen before. At least until recent years.

This blaze, called the Camp Fire, went from basically nothing to scorching 31 square miles within 12 hours. Like some extreme fires before it, like those in Redding and Santa Rosa, California last year, this one moved so fast people couldn't get out of the way.

Although there have been no confirmed fatalities yet in and around the city of Paradise, though the San Franciso Chronicle says it has reports of some deaths. Searchers haven't been able to get into the fire zone to have a look. It's too chaotic.

That's putting it mildly. Here's a glimpse of this awfulness via the Weather Channel:

"Officials confirmed to the AP that some residents who attempted to escape the fire in their vehicles were then forced to flee on foot - some holding pets and even babies in their grasp -as the flames drew closer. With few options out of Paradise, roads quickly became gridlocked, and abandoned cars left in the middle of the road only made the problems worse."

In desperation, bulldozers pushed those cars off the road so emergency responders could go in and try to rescue people. The roof of the emergency room at the local hospital caught fire. People were forced to drive through flames to get out. Other people only had a couple minutes' warning to get out of their homes as flames roared in.

Who knows how many people got out?  These paragraphs from the San Francisco Chronicle sounds grim:

"Family members and friends searched for scores of missing people. They inundated 911 with hundreds of requests for help tracking down people who were feared trapped behind fire lines. They flooded Twitter too, posting names and photos of loved ones, along with the addresses where they'd last been seen."

"Hundreds of people were unaccounted for Thursday evening after the mad rush to evacuate. Especially worrisome were reports of older people - including some with dementia or mobility problems - who had not checked in with friends or relatives."

To give you an idea about how fast this fire is, CalFire says in modern California history only nine fires destroyed more than 1,000 structures. This one looks like it destroyed that many homes and businesses within just 12 hours.

A church burns in Paradise, California Thursday.
Photo by Scott Strazzante/SF Chronicle

Southern California is under the gun, too. Fires in Ventura County kept getting worse overnight, and thousands evacuated from there as well. It appears from news video that many houses are on fire.

One of those fires is burning around the community of Thousand Oaks, forcing evacuations there. This comes just one day after a mass shooting at a bar in Thousand Oaks that claimed 12 lives. Just terrible.

Of course you can't fully blame climate change on each individual fire. But recent fires have all the hallmarks of being influenced by climate change. Including this one in northern California.

The wildfire's behavior - incredibly fast moving under intense winds -  is becoming increasingly commonplace. It used to be rare to have these chaotic evacuations with people trapped. And this fire and others are happening at a time of year that would have been virtually impossible in decades past.

Northern California should have had its first batches of autumn rains by now. It should have been too wet for this fire to get going so intensely across a parched forest and landscape. (The ongoing fires in southern California make a little more sense because winter rains normally wouldn't have really reached the south yet.)

There've been other fires that have been equally bizarre. In July, 2017, the now-famous fire tornado or fire whirl, a massive rotating firestorm with winds of up to 165 mph, crashed through neighborhoods around Redding, California.

Last October, the Tubbs fire in the Napa Valley area of California became the most destructive in California history, killing 22 people and causing $15 billion in damage.

Destructive wildfires have been popping up in weird places in recent years, too. A fire in what is normally fairly damp forests killed 14 people in and around Gatlinburg, Tennessee in late November, 2016. Again, that's a weird time of year for a wildfire in that part of the country.

Another extreme wildfire in May, 2016 destroyed parts of Fort McMurray, Canada, at a time of year when things should have been wet from melting spring snow.

Skeptics will say there have always been extreme wildfires. That's true. The deadly Peshtigo, Wisconsin wildfire of 1871 that killed as many as 2,000 people comes to mind.

But the increased frequency of these incredible, super-wildfires of recent years should give anyone concerned about climate change pause. Other things besides climate change are making these fires worse. The biggest problem is people keep building houses in or on the edges of forests that are prone to fire.

Climate change, though, is certainly a factor. Which means we'll see more and more wildfire tragedies like we're seeing in California today.

Here'a a harrowing video of somebody driving through the flames to get out of the wildfire. A fiery tree even lands on the car!



Here's news video from Paradise, California that shows everything, including an elementary school, in flames:

Last Slap Of Florence Hits Hard; Fire Tornado Sucks Up Hose, Melts It

One of the damaging tornadoes in Virginia Monday,
part of the remains of Florence

The remains of Hurricane Florence still had quite a punch Monday, unleashing tornadoes on Virginia that killed at least one person.  

Dramatic video at the bottom of this post shows it ripping roofs off buildings and flinging the debris high into the air.

A flooring company warehouse collapsed on workers during the tornado in Chesterfield County, Virginia, killing one employee and injuring another. This brought the overall death toll from Florence so far to 32.

The very last gasp, or what we think is the last gasp, is in southern New England this morning, prompting flash flood warnings in southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts  flood advisories in far southern Vermont, and flood warnings in parts of New York.

The rain avoided parched northern Vermont, and only scattered light showers might fall today as a couple of cold fronts come through. Nothing heavy. but the unseasonably hot, humid weather is ending and we will get into a spell of cool autumn weather, with the exception of a brief warmup Friday.

It has stopped raining in North Carolina, but the flooding on some rivers is only just peaking, and it will take many days for all of them to recede so cleanup can start.

FIRE WHIRL SUCKS UP HOSE

A viral video making the rounds shows a "a fire tornado" during an August 19 wild fire in British Columbia sucking a fire hose up into the air. This video is also at the bottom of this post.

Firefighter M,C. Schidowsky wrote on Instagram: "Fire tornado destroyed our line. It threw burning logs across our guard for 45 minutes and pulled our hose 100 plus feet in the air before melting it. That's definitely a first."

Seems like fire tornadoes are now a thing, give the history with that one in California earlier this year that destroyed homes around Redding, California.

First, here's the tornado video from Virginia, after that will be the fire tornado/hose video.



Here's the fire tornado grabbing the hose:

Rescue The Animals! Videos Of Animals Being Rescued From Wildfires, Floods

Image from a police bodycam as the officer wearing it
rushes into a California animal shelter to grab dogs and cast
and take them to safety as a wildfire bore down. 

Two recent videos made me happy that people do remember animals in disasters.  As wildfires and flash floods struck, people sprung into action.

Not only are people driven to save each other from harm, thank goodness there are people who remember our dog and cat and other animal companions.


The first video is bodycam footage of police rushing into an animal shelter as the Carr Fire near Redding, California bears down on the building.

By the way, the Carr fire was likely started by a camper on a highway that got a flat tire. The rim made contact with the asphalt, sparks flew into the brush and the fire started. The owners of the camper, an older couple are distraught that they accidentally started the fire and feel responsible.

Victims of the fire, many of whom lost their homes, are sending letters to the elderly couple assuring them it was not their fault and they should not feel bad.

Back to the animal rescues, Big rush to get them out, but it worked. All were saved. Watch:



Next, we go to New Jersey, where a flash flood threatened the lives of 80 dogs trapped in a doggie day care center as water began to pour in. Personnel at the place tried to get the dogs to safety, but there were too many of them.

The dogs began barking and howling so loudly in panic that people inside a nearby gun range (!!) heard them. The guys dropped their guns, went to the dog day care center and got all the dogs to safety.

Seventeen of the dogs spent the night safely at the higher and drier gun range overnight until their human companions could retrieve them. (No gunfire to scare the dogs, the place was closed while the dogs sheltered there.)

The dogs weren't the only good boys in this scenario, that's for sure. Watch the news clip:

Much Of Nation Choking On Smoky Air From Western Wildfires

This map shows smoke conditions across the nation this past Wednesday
Notice even here in Vermont we had some smoky haze.

Yesterday was one of those classic, bright, blue, beautiful summer days here in Vermont.

Visibility was excellent. Green mountains in the distance seemed so clear and distinct you felt like you could reach out and touch them.

The sky was a brilliant deep blue, small clouds gleamed white in the sun, and just breathing felt so refreshing.

Not so in much of the rest of the nation. Especially in the western half, where all those wildfires have been belching incredible amounts of smoke into the atmosphere. Like it has done often in recent years, this smoke is traveling across the nation, across the Northern Hemisphere, really, joined by smoke from wildfires in places like Canada, Siberia, even Scandinavia.

Yes, it's not just the people close to the wildfires that are being affected, though obviously they have it worse than the rest of us. We don't have to evacuate our homes, worry about walls of flames racing down the forested hillsides in back of our houses.

But when the smoke arrives, it's not good for us. We're still in the clear in Vermont, for now, but we have seen some haze from the western wildfires already. Note that the map in this post shows some smoke over us on Wednesday. And of course, it was rather hazy that day. That cold front early Friday shoved the smoke south of New England, for now.

A smoky haze obscures the view of the Adirondacks from the
Burlington, Vermont waterfront last August. A wave of
wildfire smoke from the western U.S. was passing through at the time.

Particulate pollution -  which is really the smoke pollution - is pretty high today in broad areas of the West and Midwest.

Minnesota, many hundreds of miles away from the western wildfires, is under an Air Quality Alert today. Special weather statements are up in many areas, including the Dakotas, for a smokey haze that's reducing visibility.

This haze isn't good for anybody's health. Elderly, newborns and people with pre-existing conditions like COPD and emphysema are at risk. Wildfires are harming the health of people thousands of miles from where the actual flames are.

People are describing the extreme western wildfires as the "new normal" partly because climate change has made wildfires bigger, stronger and more erratic.

The new normal also means more hazy times for the rest of us. Even here in Vermont. The atmosphere out there is clean and clear as I write this early Saturday morning. But the haze will be back, sooner or later, any day now, and we'll have to get used to more days in which our Green Mountains fade behind a greyish, bluish haze.

Enjoy the clean air while you have it.

Another Day, Another Deadly Firestorms Sweeps Through A City

Wildfire burns a historic old schoolhouse in Shasta, California
on Thursday. Photo by Noah Berger/AP

These seem to be happening more and more lately:

Another terrible firestorm is ripping through a city, this time, Redding, California. The north-central California community of 92,000 is facing massive evacuations, at least dozens of homes burned, at least one death, and many injured. 

It's so bad that television station KRCR in Redding was knocked off the air, its staff evacuated because the area was unsafe. Apparently, they're back, because there was a live feed from the television station going as of  6:30 EDT.

There's a clip of that moment when KRCR was evacuated at the bottom of this post.

Details on this fire are still sketch as I write this early Friday morning as it is breaking news. Apparently, the fire ripped through the nearby towns of Shasta and Whiskeytown before jumping the Sacramento River and charging through Redding overnight.

"The fire is moving pretty rapidly and taking everything down in its path," said Scott McLean, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Weather conditions are terrible in northern California are not expected to get better anytime soon. At one point Thursday in Redding, the temperature was 113 degrees, with an 11 percent relative humidity, with three mile visibility in smoke.

Similarly hot, dry weather is forecast for the next several days in the region.

Scientists have long warned us that wildfires would get worse as climate change takes hold, and that seems to be what's happening. Combine that with more and more people building houses in or near the wilderness and you get what happened in California last night.

Screen grab showing KRCR anchors in Redding announcing they are
going off the air because the television station was being
evacuated ahead of an oncoming wildfire

Redding joins a growing list of communities worldwide that have been devastated by wildfires in recent years. Just this week, that wildfire that roared through seaside resorts in Greece killed at least 80 people.

In 2017, wildfires destroyed 10,000 California structures, more than in the nine previous years combined, the Sacramento Bee reported. Those fires killed 43 people - more fatalities than in the previous ten years combined.

One of those fires ripped through Napa and Sonoma, destroying 5,600 structures.

Back in May, 2016, a huge wildfire blasted through Fort McMurray, Canada, destroying 2,400 structures and forcing the mass evacuation of the city's 88,000 residents.

Fire season across the Northern Hemisphere is far from over. Which community will be hit next?

Here's the clip from KRCR:



And here's an AP video of homes burning near or in Redding:

Gatlinburg Fire Update: Seven Dead, More Missing, Fires Still Smolder

Fires burn through a resort area near Gatlinburg,
Tennessee this week.  

I was afraid not everyone would be able get through Monday night's chaotic wildfire evacuations in and around Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Unfortunately, I was right.

The death toll has reached seven in the aftermath of the firestorm that engulfed much of the area around Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee Monday night.

Other people are still missing, including a vacationing couple who got separated from their three young adult sons during the fire evacuation, USA Today reports. The sons were found injured and are now hospitalized.

Authorities are having trouble searching for more victims because roads are still blocked by downed trees, wires and other debris.

This could have been even worse, had the fire roared through a few days earlier. The resort area of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge were packed with vacationers over the Thanksgiving weekend. Most of them left Sunday to get back to work, so fewer tourists were endangered when the fire exploded Monday.

Wildfire devastation in Gatlinburg. 

While many homes, hotels and other buildings burned, some iconic attractions in the area survived.

The Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge is almost 100 percent intact and is expected to reopen Friday.

Ripley's Aquarium Of the Smokies, with perhaps 10,000 animals, survived..

Staffers were able to get back to the building a day or so after the fire and reported the buildings survived the fire, as did all the animals in the complex.

However, most of the 100 or so buildings at the Westgate Mountain Resort and Spa were destroyed, as was a locally famous wedding chapel and The Castle, an iconic home overlooking Gatlinburg, burned down, USA Today said. 

In all, roughly 700 homes and businesses were destroyed in the fires. So far.

It rained Tuesday and Wednesday in and around Gatlinburg. That was enough to tamp down the fires so they now aren't quite as menacing, at least for now.

But it will take more than a couple downpours to put the fires out, as a severe drought has things very, very dry and what rain fell didn't penetrate the dry leaves and forests in the Smokey Mountains. region.

The fire around Gatlinburg was only 10 percent contained Wednesday, television station WBIR reported. 

Some more rain is in the forecast over the next few days, but the many forest fires in and near the Smoky Mountains are expected to continue burning. That's going to keep people in the area on edge.

Terrifying Wildfire Roars Through Tennessee City, Resort

Sharon Pinyan snapped this scary photo as she
evacuated from the Gatlinburg fire last night.
She said the car behind her caught fire as
flames jumped into the road. 

I watched in horror on social media last night as an immense wildfire tour through the city of Gatlinbug, Tennessee and surrounding resort communities like Pigeon Forge

Details are still coming in but dozens and dozens of buildings appear to be lost. I don't know if anybody died in the fires but the flames came into town so fast, and the evacuation was so chaotic, I definitely worry about people there.

Incredibly scary videos of the Gatlinburg fire are at the bottom of this post.

Television station WATE in Knoxville, Tennessee was reporting that 30 buildings in Gatlinburg were on fire, including a 16-story hotel and a large apartment complex.

Incredibly scary video emerged on social media of people trapped inside the smoke-filled hotel as flames danced wildly just outside the windows.

WATE interviewed a man named Logan Baker, via phone, who was trapped in the burning Gatlinburg Park Vista hotel. Firefighters on the scene told people it was unsafe to leave due to 80 mph winds and swirling flames and embers, and falling, burning trees outdoors.


Sadly, the wedding chapel
during the fire



A Gatlingburg wedding chapel
before the fire

"The only road to get down from the hotel, trees had fallen down in the road and were just engulfed in flames...Then the flames came up into the parking lot and then they told us we all had to stay inside," Baker told WATE.

The hotel's emergency doors came off their rollers, so dense smoke and hot embers swept into the hotel's interior.

The smoke was so dense in the hotel it was hard to breathe. Guests like Baker went to upper floors of the hotel and smashed out windows to get (slightly) better air.

Sound absolutely terrifying to me.   

Baker said as he leaned out these windows, he could see fires in downtown Gatlinburg and numerous cabins on the hillsides exploding into flames.

Ripley's Aquarium was evacuated, and workers there had to abandon 10,000 or so animals there. At last report, the building was still standing, but we don't know how things are there. The Aquarium's manager said some workers had to be forcibly removed from the building because they didn't want to leave the animals.

Another wildfire was just on the edge of the famed Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge. Guests at the parks hotels and cabins were all evacuated. At last report, none of the strucures at Dollywood were on fire, and firefighters were setting up in the park to protect buildings.

The Amercian Eagle Foundation was also conducting an emergency evacuation of its bird sanctuary and rehabilitation center in Pigeon Forge. I imagine it must be incredibly difficult to move all those birds out of harm's wa.

People in the fire zone were also urged to stay off their cell phones unless they were making emergency calls because the system was overloaded.

A weather station on the east side of Gatlinburg during the fires was telling: It reported a temperature of 118 degrees with a 43 mph wind, gusting to 69 mph. Yikes!

FIres have been burning for weeks near Gatlinburg and much of the Southeast due to a record drought.

A strong cold front was approaching with a burst of much needed rain last night. However, preceding the rain were very strong south winds that fanned the flames and send them cascading uncontrollably into Gatlinburg.  


A popular restaurant burns near Gatlinburg,
Tennessee Monday evening.

I was watching weather radar and you could see the increasing plume of smoke from Gatlinburg and a large band of rain approaching from the west. I was literally urging the rain to move faster toward Gatlinburg, but it obviously didn't arrive fast enough.

The Gatlinburg fire disaster comes just a week after a wildfire crashed into the big city of Haifa, Israel. Another immense wildfire tore into Fort McMurray Alberta, Canada this spring.

You have to wonder if the Gatlinburg disaster, and the other fires are part of climate change. It's hard to tease out one incident, like Gatlinburg and start screaming "CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!"

But it is consistent with climate change, in that global warming makes extreme weather more likely.

Oh, sure, there have always been epic wildfire disasters. In 1871, on the same night as the Great Chicago Fire, a wildfire swept into Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing perhaps 2,000 people. (It's known as America's forgotten fire, as Chicago took the headlines, but Peshtigo was the more deadly of the two disasters.)

In 1910, America's largest wildfire, fed by hurricane force winds, killed 86 people in Idaho.

But it's the apparent uptick in the frequency of wildfires and other strange weather disasters that has caught my attention this year, which will go down as the world's warmest in modern record.

Something very disconcerning is definitely going on,  and Donald Trump is a fool if he still thinks climate change is hoax.

Some Gatlinburg videos:

In the first one, Michael Luciano filmed his narrow escape by car from the hills around Gatlinburg, as forests and cabins around him burned ferociously. He's lucky to be alive:



Here's the view from inside the smoke-filled Park Vista Hotel during the wildfire:

Fire Tornado In California Wildfire

A whirl of flames and ash during a wildfire near
Santa Barbara, California last week.
Photo by David McNew AFP/Getty  

The record heat that's gripping the American southwest is also raising the risk of wildfire, and making the ones that are going even worse.  

Already, some have been burning in recent days in California, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

A wildfire near Santa Barbara, California last wee riggered a very scary looking fire tornado, which you can see in the video below.

The heat in the Southwest has tempered only slightly in the past couple of days, and above normal temperatures with very little precipitation are forecast for at least the next week in that region.

So more wildfire trouble seems inevitable

Watch the fire tornado:

Bill Nye And I Had A Disagreement

I'm glad Bill Nye is an advocate against climate change
but not all weather events are caused by global warming.  

I like Bill Nye.

I also like the fact that he's sounding alarm bells on climate change. It is something to worry about, as  rising seas and increasingly erratic weather threaten the well being of so many people now, and especially in the future.

However, sounding the wrong alarm bells can backfire, as it did yesterday.

Nye posted an image of a television screen with CBS This Morning that showed an image of a tornado marauding through a Kentucky town on Tuesday.

Nye's accompanying Tweet read, "More severe weather. More suffering. More expense. Let's all take climate change seriously."

The implication was that Monday and Tuesday's United States tornado outbreak was at least influenced by global warming.

Perhaps a little, who knows? But I Tweeted back at Nye and said (with abbreviations cleaned up here)

"I agree with your stance on global warming, but tornado outbreaks like this one, though tragic, are normal this time of year."

Which is true.  Outbreaks like the one this week happen almost every year, regrettably. This one killed at least two people and destroyed lots of homes and businesses. Definitely not a good thing.

But attributing a tornado outbreak, the kind that have always happened, to climate change is incredibly dicey, to put it mildly.

The reasons I objected to Nye is that his Tweet seemed factually incorrect and gave ammunition to the people who try to deny climate change.

Climate change activists are irrational alarmists goes the party line.

And sure enough, The Federalist, a conservative publication, weighed in with an article about Nye's Tweet.

The Federalist in an article titled "Bill Nye Is a Huckster" said snarkily:

"If people trusted global warming alarmists, they might function under the premise that severe weather events are something unique to this particular age. It was only the discovery of fossil fuels that forced man to wrestle with the terrifying hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and rain showers. Before the Fall of Man, it was San Diego for everyone all the time."

The thing is, certain weather events are getting more common as the planet warms. Other things aren't really changing, as far as we know. There doesn't seem to be any particular trend in the number of tornadoes.

But deadly heat waves, droughts, and extreme storms have increased in some regions, and that could e a sign of climate change.

No single weather event can conclusively be tied to climate change. But unlike the tornadoes this week, some disasters are consistent with what scientists say are the fingerprints of climate change.

Take Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, which was overrun by an extreme wildfire this month.

True, wildfires have consumed towns and cities before. On the same day as the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, a wildfire roared parts of Wisconsin and Michigan That Peshtigo Fire of 1871 killed an estimated 2,000 people.

That's a lot worse than Fort McMurray, isn't it?

However, a wildfire as extreme as the one in Fort McMurray, that early in the spring that far north in Canada, might be a symptom of climate change. A lot of factors came together to create that disaster, but climate change could well have been one of them.

Nye might have done better to cite Fort McMurray instead of a tornado in Kentucky.  Climate change denialists will always attack climate change activists for their "alarmism" So we need to be careful to be alarmed only by things that are really alarming.

Rationality is on the side of people advocating for confronting climate change and trying to do something about it. It's a lot better than bringing a snowball onto the U.S. Senate floor in the dead of winter to "prove" climate change doesn't exist.

I don't mean to dwell on a single Tweet by Bill Nye or attack him. I'm just using his Tweet to make a point.

Here's my thing: We shouldn't panic over climate change. We're not all going to die in three hours because the world has gotten so hot.

But we should rationally, and as quickly as possible, deal with it. Find alternatives to fossil fuel. Understand better how the world's climate and environment will change with a warming world so that we can deal with it.

Doing so will help us economically, competitively and morally. The following is a cliche, but still: Why should we hand over a world to our grandchildren that's worse than the one we have now?

We really don't need any more Fort McMurrays.

Record Heat And Drought Bring Apocalyptic Fire To Canadian City.

A massive wildfire sweeps into Fort McMurray,
Alberta, Canada on Tuesday.  

You might have seen this on the news, but while you were watching election returns out of Indiana last night, a Canadian city burned up.

Fort McMurray, population about 83,000, was evacuated as a massive wildfire pummeled the city.

After a very, warm, dry winter, strong, very dry winds swept Alberta and surrounding areas amid record heat. Fort McMurray had a record high temperature of 90 degrees, but that was the least of the concern.

This was one of the largest evacuations in Canadian history.

It was certainly the largest evacuation in Alberta history. Whole neighborhoods went up in flames.

Videos are at the bottom of this post.

Highway 63, the main highway in and out of Fort McMurray, was a scene of chaos as traffic came to a standstill amid the panicked evacuations, and flames swept over the road.

The Edmonton Journal reported no fatalities in the fires yet, but the situation is still unfolding, and I fear some people didn't get out in time, based on how scary the scenes looked.

The Edmonton Journal did report people going in and out of homes and fleeing in one mobile home park as a wall of flames swept in, so that doesn't sound good.

Whole neighborhoods are known to be on fire, but firefighters also saved many other neighborhoods. Fires extended to near or even downtown Fort McMurray. News video showed a Super 8 Hotel on fire in the downtown area.

Fire along busy Highway 63, on which people were
evacuating from the blaze, Tuesday in
Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. 

A large area of southwestern Canada remains under very high fire danger today amid the high temperatures, strong winds and dry air.

The wildfire season in North America is off to a terrible start, thanks to a warm, dry winter in many regions.

Huge wildfires swept parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas earlier this spring, causing widespread damage.

What little snow there was melted early in northern areas. The earliest wildfires on record were reported last month in Alaska.

Even here where I am in New England, there were many relatively small brush fires in April because of dry conditions and a premature snow melt. (Rain arrived this week in the Northeast, which is definitely helping.)

El Nino is largely to blame for this situation, since it tends to cause warm dry winters in the northern half of North America.

While I can't specifically tie climate change to the Fort McMurray fire, or any of the wildfires this spring for that matter, the fires are consistent with what climatologists say is a likely consequence of the warming now under way.

By the way, I saw some internet meanness already concerning the Fort McMurray fire. It's in the tar sands area of Alberta, and critics say the oil extraction there is environmentally damaging and contributes to global warming.

Though almost everybody is correctly sympathetic to the people in the fire zone, a few jerks said they deserve it because they're supposedly seeing the consequences of global warming.

By that logic, I guess people deserved to be in car wrecks because they used fossil fuels while driving to work.

Idiotic hostility helps nobody. Let's just hope Fort McMurray recovers well, and I encourage everyone to help them.  Click on this link to the Red Cross to help the city and its fire victims.

California had some drought relief this winter, so it's a question whether the wildfire season there will be as bad as recent years.

But a vast stretch of northern forest from Alaska through much of Canada is dry, so that region is primed for more disasters like the one in Fort McMurray on Tuesday.

This video shows a Global News reporter near the fire as it approaches heavy traffic along Highway 63 in Fort McMurray:



This CBC report with some scary, and sad video is also an eye-opener

Fire And Snow, Whiplash Weather, One Extreme To Another, In Central Plains

To say the weather in the Plains states is erratic is an understatement. Especially so far this winter.

Looked like a lovely late afternoon Monday amid 70 degree
warmth in this webcam image from Yankton, South Dakota
but the area around the city was under a fire alert
due to low humidity and strong winds. And
a winter storm is likely Wednesday,.  

Especially this week. For instance, my in-laws in Yankton, in southeastern South Dakota have somehow managed to find themselves simultaneously under an extreme fire danger alert and a winter storm watch.

Those two things seem mutually exclusive, because it is by definition not normally dry during a winter storm, but it's happening.   

Actually, out ahead of the upcoming storm, it's remarkably warm, windy and very, very dry in the central Plains, hence the fire alerts. 

Then, a storm will start getting its act together Wednesday, probably over Kansas or Nebraska. It will strengthen pretty fast and draw cold air down from Canada. 

That's where the winter storm watch comes in. The wintry weather will extend from southeastern South Dakota, through northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, into central Wisconsin and a good chunk of the lower peninsula of Michigan.

No winter weather alerts are in effect in New England, at least not yet, but this storm is going to cause mixed precipitation, at least off and on in northern New England, Tuesday night through Friday, so be alert there.

As that storm strengthens develops over the Rockies tomorrow, then more intensely over the central Plains Wednesday, very dry, strong winds will sweep from New Mexico to Kansas.

NOAA forecasters are very, very concerned about extreme fire weather in parts of New Mexico, Texas and western Oklahoma Tuesday:

Says NOAA's fire forecasters:

A significant fire weather event should unfold during the day, with the potential for rapid fire spread quite high. Additionally, overnight RH (relative humidity) recovery will be relativelky poor over parts of eastern New Mexico and the Texas/Oklahoma panhandles, keeping fire weather concerns elevated/critical through much of the night."

In other words, there's a high, high risk of some sort of wildfire disaster, possibly involving lots of homes up in flames, in that region.

Southeast of the developing storm, some severe thunderstorms, and maybe a tornado or two, could break out around northeastern Texas, eastern Oklahoma and parts of Arkansas.

Yeah, there's some extreme weather out there over the next couple of days.  

Watch That Scary Video Of People Driving Through California Wildfire

The fire around Middletown, California looms over this highway
Saturday as it rapidly spreads.  

The wildfire that destroyed much of Middletown, California over the weekend was scary in many respects.

Of course, the worst part is it killed one person and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in just hours.

Another odd aspect of this fire is how fast ir spread.

At 3:30 p.m. local time Saturday, the fire had just covered about 400 acres - not that huge by western standards.

By 6:30 p.m. it had consumed 10,000 acres and by 10:30 p.m. it had covered 25,000 acres.

It was windy and hot and dry that day, so a fire would spread fast. But experts say it was odd that the fire spread that fast.

According to a Wunderground blog by Dr. Jeff Masters, such extreme fire behavior is a result of the nearly unprecedented multi-year drought in the area.

Also, fires sometimes create their own weather, and there were "heat bursts" in the area, as convection, possibly related to the fire, caused strong winds that spread the flames.

The drought is so intense that practically every ember that landed ahead of the main fire started a new one.

People who  had to evacuate had to do so hastily, with no time to collect belongings. As you see in the video below, many had narrow escapes.

It's a miracle that none of the burning trees you'll see in the video fell on the road, blocking the escape for the people in the car. Or worse, waves of flames or burning trees could have fallen right o the car. Yikes

 Since droughts are becoming more likely as a result of climate change, these kinds of extreme fires will probably be more and more common in the future.

Here's the scary video:

"Firenado" In Idaho Wildfire Is Amazing

Firenado in Idaho this week.  

The heat generated by wildfires, like the massive ones going on in the western United States right now, can often produce whirlwinds of smoke, ash and sometimes fire.  

Firefighter Craig Fluer caught this big smoke whirlwind at a huge fire near Boise, Idaho this week. It extended more than 100 feet up into the air.

Here's the video:

As Expected, Fire Season Out West Is Just Terrible And Getting Worse

Wildfire sweeping through Wenatchee, Washington
amid unprecedented June heat last weekend.  

Hot times have come this summer to parts of the United States, and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere with incredible heat waves breaking all time records.

The trend is continuing into July.

It seems where I live in Vermont was the exception: June was a little cool and a LOT wet, with near record amounts of precipitation and no days making it to 90 degrees. But it's a totally different story elsewhere.

Out West, it was hot, hot, hot.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, in June, 1,484 daily record highs were set at United States weather station, while only 106 daily record lows were set.

74 weather stations had all time record highs for the entire month of June, and two set all time high temperature records.

The heat has truly been extreme in Washington State and nearby areas. According to Weather Underground, the high temperature of 113 degrees in Walla Walla, Washington, if verified, will not only be the hottest June temperature on record in that city, but for the entire state.

In Walla Walla, the new June record broke the old record of 109 degrees for the month, set just the day before.

List of cities that had record
warm Junes. Click on image
 to make it bigger, easier to see.  

Lewiston, Idaho reached 111 degrees, which is a June record for that city, and possibly for the entire state of Idaho.

All time June high temperature records were set in Yakima and Spokane, Washington; Kalispell, Missoula and Helena, Montana and Meacham Oregon.

At least 19 cities in the northwestern United States, and in Alaska, had their warmest Junes on record. Some cities broke the record by very wide margins.

As you'd expect, with the extreme heat and the ongoing drought, wildfires broke out. As you might have seen on the news, one such wildfire slammed into the city of Wenatchee, Washington, burning at least two dozen homes, along with some businesses.

As you'll notice in an amazing video at the bottom of this post, embers from the main wildfire traveled long distances to set buildings in Wenatchee ablaze.

The drought and heat extended into western Canada and Alaska. Revelstoke, a ski resort town in British Columbia, reached 103 degrees on Sunday.

June wildfire near Willow, Alaska.
Photo by Mat-Su Borough.   

Because of early season heat, Alaska is off to its worst fire season in history.

Alaska is closing in on 2 million acres charred by fires already and it's early in the fire season. This year is on pace to easily surpass 2004 as Alaska's worst fire year on record, when more than 6 million acres burned, says the Washington Post

The fires in Alaska are particularly dangerous. Permafrost is underneath much of Alaska's forests and scrub land that's on fire. If thre's a fire, there's dark ash left.

The black ash collects the heat of the sun, helping to melt the permafrost underneath. When permafrost melts, it releases carbon dioxide into the air.

The released carbon dioxide just adds more to the processes that accelerate global warming.

All this smoke from the wildfires is spreading far and wide. Part of northeastern Montana was under a  dense smoke advisory Monday due to Canadian wildfires. Smoke has spread through much of the middle of the country.

People in areas where the smoke gets really thick face health hazards. Fine particulates in the smoke can cause lung damage.

Expect bouts of smoky haze anywhere in the United States over the next few weeks because of these fires. The smoke would be ironic in many parts of the South and Northeast, parts of which had a record wet June.

Elsewhere, Europe is settling into a nasty heat wave to open the month of July. Already, Madrid, Spain set a new high temperature record for the month of June with a reading of 104 degrees for two days in a row.

Today's high temperature of 36.7 Celcius or 98 degrees Fahrenheit is the hottest July temperature on record in the United Kingdom

Forecasters say temperatures this week could reach to 110 degrees in southern Spain near Cordoba, says the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang blog.

The blog also reports that temperatures could reach 100 degrees in Paris by Wednesday.

The impending heat wave in Europe brings fears of another disaster like in the summer of 2003, in which weeks of record heat killed or contributed to the deaths of up to 35,000 people.

The building European heat is caused by an "omega block"in which areas of low pressure create a high pressure area between them and push hot air far north into Europe.

The omega block can sustain itself for long periods. The high temperatures strengthen the ridge, the ridge creates more heat and you're stuck with a long, dangerous hot spell that in the worst scenarios can last weeks, as Capital Weather Gang notes.

Pakistan also suffered a terrible heat wave during June, in which at least 1,200 were killed by heat related ailments, like heat stroke.

If you're wondering if all these heat waves are related to global warming, they could well be. It's hard to pin a specific weather event on global warming and lots of factors cause heat waves, but as the world warms, we've long been told we can expect more frequent and more intense heat waves.

The hot spells in the Northern Hemisphere this summer are completely consistent with what the climate scientists have been telling us would happen.

It looks  like it's going to be a long, hot, fiery summer.

Here's life in Wenatchee, Washington last weekend.

Forest Fire Terror: A Firenado

The Rocky Mountain states aren't the only areas on fire in the United States at the moment. There are some big forest fires going on in Alaska, too.

The big forest fire in Alaska  

Which resulted in the dramatic video in this post. It was taken from a plane flying at an elevation of about 1,900 feet above the fire.

The video shows basically a fire tornado. There are videos out there of these tight whirlwinds of fire in these conflagrations. But this fire whirl is essentially of the same scope and strength of one of those really big tornadoes you see in the Midwest every spring.

Here's a description from the Alaska Department of Forestry's Facebook page:

This footage was taken on August 16, 2013, on the Tetlin Junction Ridge Fire burning in the Tok area. The Alaska Division of Forestry firefighter that captured the footage has never seen anything like it in his 20 years of firefighting. It is the kind of fire behavior you hear about but can't really believe. "A picture probably is worth a thousand words, but there are indeed times when a picture just doesn't do it justice. I've never seen anything like it until now." - Tim Whitesell. Thanks to Tim and the pilot Doug Burts (together serving as an Aerial Supervision Module) for sharing this footage.

The type of fire tornado that you see in this video often are powerful enough to blow down trees before the fire gets to it. I imagine the winds associated with this Alaska fire tornado exceeded 100 mph.

As you can see, this fire was in a very remote area. Can you imagine if a fire tornado like this tore its way into a town?

Here's the vid: