Not Just Vermont: U.S. Dry Areas Drying Out More

Yes, it's dry and getting drier up here in Vermont, but a "flash drought"
is enveloping pars of the United States Southwest

When dry conditions develop in the summer in any given location, they tend to persist as rain storms just seem to go around parched areas.

That's what seems to be happening now in some areas of the nation.

It's dry in Vermont now, but it's nothing like what's going on in parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, southern Utah and Arizona.  

As the Weather Channel reports, that area is experiencing a flash drought, a spell of dangerously dry weather that develops quickly, over days and weeks, as opposed to months and years like most droughts.

The culprit there is - of course - a lack of rain.  However, the weather pattern has brought a few weeks of very hot and windy weather in that region.  Such weather dries the ground out quickly, which is why the drought has developed so rapidly.

This week's weather forecast for the area around west Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado is bad: Lots of dry, hot air and lots of wind.  The wind is striking because winds tend to be lighter once we exit spring and go into summer.

Not surprisingly, given the conditions, there's a big risk of fire this weekend, and beyond, especially in parts of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and some of the high Plains of western Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Already, a wildfire near Tucson, Arizona has forced evacuations of some neighborhoods in the foothills of nearby mountains.

Here in Vermont, things aren't nearly so dire, but as noted yesterday, we're continuing to watch the increasingly dry conditions here.

That rain Thursday temporarily helped in some areas, but the forecast for the North Country is bad if you want moisture for your gardens and farm fields. (Though I admit the forecast for several days in a  row of dry weather is great for farmers who are haying).

There are some inconsequential sprinkles around today.  And it might have snowed a bit atop Mount Mansfield.   I know that at one point this morning, it was 34 degrees up there and some sort of light precipitation was falling.  Weather radar also indicated snowflakes landing on the High Peak summits of the Adirondacks this morning.

In any event, after today, there is currently no precipitation in Vermont's forecast at least into Friday.  High pressure will park itself over northern New England and southern Quebec.  A dramatic warming trend between now and midweek will help evaporation increase - further drying out our surroundings.

We're now into the longest days of the year, which gives the sun all the more time to dry things out as well.

Beyond Friday, we see hints of precipitation moving in, but it's way too early to tell if that will actually materialize.

Time to maybe start doing rain dances?

Australian Firefighter Saves Baby Kangaroo

A filmmaker and Instagram star who volunteered to fight Australian
wildfires grabbed this baby kangaroo just before flames would have
reach it. Video of the rescue has gone viral.

One of the many heartbreaking aspects of the Australian wildfire crisis is the toll this is taking on animals.

There's been wildly varying reports of how much wildlife has died, but it's clear the toll is devastating.

When you witness just one animal victim,  your heart just breaks.  You wish every animal could be rescued.

Such is the case in the video at the bottom of this post, in which a firefighter finds a baby kangaroo, just inches from a line of flames coming at it.  .

In the now viral video,  fire is creeping along in a forest, and firefighters are trying to stop or slow by spraying water on it from hoses. Suddenly, one of the firefighters, who turns out to be a travel filmmaker and big Instagram star named Sam McGlone, stoops down and grabs the baby kangaroo, which is less than a foot away from the advancing flames. It truly is an incredibly close call.

"I found a baby joey i the fire," McGlone says, turning the camera to face himself.  He wrapped the baby kangaroo in a blanket, fed it some water.

Indications are the kangaroo was sent to an animal rehab center.

McGlone also started a GoFundMe page to raise money to help animals affected by the wildfires. He joins many others, including rich and famous celebrities, who have the money and the influence over their fans to raise a lot of money for Australian human and animal fire victims. t

McGlone rescuing the kangaroo was a bright spot in this horrific disaster, but how many animals died because nobody was in the middle of the fires to find them?  After all, people were fleeing for their own lives and some didn't make it. So far, at least 24 people have died in the Australian bushfires.

It's not clear how many animals died in the fires, but the numbers are huge. According to The Independent, Universityof Sydney ecologists think perhaps 480 million animals have died in the fire,s including 8,000 or so koalas.

Here's the video:

Australia Heat Unprecedented, And Fires Threaten Sydney

Worrisome front page of Australia's Sydney
Moring Herald today. 

I've been harping on Australia for a month or two now as they had such an extreme, dangerous spring and summer so far. And it just got a lot worse.

As a reminder, Australia is south of the Equator. So as we Vermonters shiver in subzero weather, it's time for heat waves down under.

Australia is always generally hot in the summer, but what's going on there is both unprecedented and scary.

For the continent as a whole Wednesday the average continent wide daytime high temperature was 41.9 C or 107.2F, which was the hottest day in Australian history.  It shattered the previous record set just the day before, on Tuesday by a full degree Celsius. Which is a lot when you're averaging out a whole continent.

A small hamlet named Nullarbor in southern Australia reached 121.8 degrees, which is the highest temperature recorded anywhere on Earth in any December, says Bob Henson in Weather Underground's Category 6 blog.

That's not quite the hottest temperature every recorded in Australia, but it was close. (The hottest being 123.3 degrees in January, 1960.

Henson, in Category 6, explains the extreme Australian heat is being caused by a number of factors. It's right around the Summer Solstice down under, so sunshine is at its peak. An  ongoing drought means the solar energy is warming the ground and the air just above it, and not evaporating soil moisture. (Evaporation tends to keep temperatures down a bit.)

A cyclical weather pattern is encouraging air to sink over Australia. Sinking air clears the skies and warms the air.  On top of this, climate change is probably turning what would have been a nasty heat wave into an extreme, record breaking one.

Climate change is affecting Australia like it is most of the world.  The trendline in Australia has been toward more intense heat waves and droughts, interspersed with more intense storms and flooding.  Ominously, this trend will likely continue in the coming decades, so the heat and fires Australia is now experiencing could easily get even worse in the future.

Speaking of wildfires, it's bone dry in the heat in large swaths of Australia, and destructive wildfires have been burning in many areas, as i've noted before.

The front page of the Sydney Morning Herald today is terrifying: "Fires Close In On City" with a large photo of an intense fire.

Two firefighters died in a crash while fighting wildfires on Thursday.  The heat and wind are iexpected to intensify through Saturday in southeastern Australia, including around Sydney, so that is far from good news.

Here's a rather dire newscast about the fires from Australia:

Two Very Different Style Windstorms To Affect Vermont, California

Widespread rainfall of near two inches is expected with the
upcoming windy storm Thursday into Friday.

This is essentially an update to yesterday's post, with more details about a pretty stiff storm about to sock us here in Vermont, and a nearly unprecedented wind event (and possibly fire event coming to southern California today.

Let's start locally.  It's already been breezy in parts of Vermont, especially the Champlain Valley, as I drove through a blizzard of falling leaves amid 30 mph wind gusts.

That's just a foretaste of what's to come.  Yep, we are going to get a lot of rain and wind.  There's a risk of both flooding and damaging winds Thursday night and Friday in and around Vermont.

I suppose way out ahead of the main storm there could be a couple light showers this afternoon, but they're nothing to worry about. 

The main show arrives tomorrow. At first, it'll just be showers, but a steady rain will move in during the afternoon as winds increase.

It's tricky to predict how strong winds will get while it's raining.  There will be strong winds aloft, but  rainfall can sometimes prevent those winds from mixing down to the surface.

There will be locally strong winds.  Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in South Burlington think channeling effects in the Champlain Valley could bring gusts to 45 mph there.

Worse, the southeast flow could bring strong downslope winds to the western slopes of the Green Mountains. There's definitely a risk of gusts in the 60 to 70 mph range, with maybe a couple locally higher gusts along the western slopes of the Green Mountains Thursday night.

That will be Round One of the wind. More on Round Two at the moment.

Between the wind and the rain, it's not going to be a great night for trick or treating. Overnight, this noisy storm will likely produce a lot of rain.  Most of the state should get one to two inches, with locally three inches possible.

We've had a lot of rain lately, so the soils are saturated. This amount of rain is probably enough to cause some flooding. It won't be an Irene-style epic flood, but even minor flooding is something to pay attention to.  People always tend to try to drive across flooded roads and that's such a bad idea.  This should be obvious, but whatever.

It seems the rivers most at risk of some flooding are the Mad and Winooski and Other Creek in Vermont and Ausable in New York.  But any water way could flood, and small streams could wash out dirt roads.

Newly fallen leaves can form little dams in streams. When these dams eventually break, you get rushes of water that can take out culverts or wreck gravel roads.

In urban areas, newly fallen leaves can can clog storm drains, too.  Needless to say, a flood watch is up pretty much region wide.

Friday morning, the storm's sharp cold front will whip through, which will shut off the heavy rain. (Lighter showers will continue here and there.)

This cold front opens the door for more strong winds, this time from the west.  Gusts in favored areas could reach 55 mph. Most of us will gust over 40 mph Friday.

Overall, there's already a high wind watch up in northwestern New York and those wind watches, warnings and advisories will almost certainly spread across most of Vermont.

Obviously, the large upcoming storm won't just affect Vermont.  The entire Northeast is due for a big blast of wind, rain and power outages with this storm. 

Not everybody will lose electricity, but there will be outages.  Make sure your devices are fully charged by Thursday evening, just in case.

CALIFORNIA WIND/FIRES

It seems like we've been talking about the California wildfires for weeks now, though it's only been days.

It also seems like every time we say this will be the worst day, an even worse day comes along. That's today in southern California.

Meteorologists are predicting one of the strongest Santa Ana winds on record in southern California. This will be combined with a relative humidity of well under 10 percent.  Santa Ana winds and fire weather occur every autumn in southern California, but not like this.

Every time there's a real fire risk, something called a red flag warning is issued.  This happens a lot in southern California in the autumn, so the National Weather Service in Los Angeles worried that people would just dismiss it as just another background noise weather alert.

To shake people out of their complacency, they're calling this one an Extreme Red Flag Warning. "Conditions are as dangerous for fire growth and behavior as we have seen in recent memory," the NWS warned. 

Unlike most Santa Ana wind events, the weather won't be particularly hot this time. Normally, the air rushing down the hills in Santa Ana winds compresses, which heats it up. The air mass triggering the winds is so cold that this warming won't be very pronounced.

Unfortunately, that doens't matter.  Between the winds gusting to 80 mph on the ridgelines and in some canyons and 60 to 70 mph elsewhere; and the relative humidity running in the single digits, you can imaging how fast a fire would spread.  I don't think any human could keep up with it.

So, millions of people in southern California are on edge, wondering if they will be the ones who have to flee in a flash because of a fire.

The winds are so strong this time that even outside fire zones, the National Weather Service is saying people should stay out of forested areas and away from trees.  They could topple easily in such strong winds.

I guess we here in Vermont should count ourselves lucky that we're only going to get lowland flooding, a few toppled trees and power failures.

Spooky Halloween Storm To Step Vermont Down Closer To Winter (California Keeps Burning)

Fallen leaves in my St. Albans, Vermont yard.
The few remaining leaves on the trees will
probably come down Thursday and Friday
amid an expected rain and wind storm.

Every autumn, a strong storm comes along bringing a lot of precipitation and wind, and a pronounced step down toward winter.

Such a storm is coming for Halloween and on Friday, so get those winter jackets out! It won't be extremely cold after this storm goes by, but you'll notice the difference.

First, we have to get through this uncoming storm, which looks to be a bit of a doozy.

Today will be OK, with relatively mild temperatures and some sun in the western half of Vermont. Eastern Vermont will be cloudier.

Same is true Wednesday with only a slight chance of showers.

Thursday, Halloween, is when things start to get interesting. And it's bad news for trick or treaters, unless they're planning on dressing up as umbrellas or rain gauges or something.

It'll get showery and breezy Thursday as the storm's warm front arrives. Things will intensify Thursday night as a lot of moisture is likely to get sucked up from the Gulf of Mexico into this storm.

It's been wet lately, and it looks like we're in for another one or two inches of rain with this storm Thursday night and Friday. Some places will get even more than that. I think at least some minor flooding is a good possibility with this storm.

Overnight Thursday and into Friday morning will be perfectly spooky for the season with strong winds and occasionally heavy rains.  That makes for a noisy storm, and you'll hear eerie things outside, like the occasional small branch breaking,  shutters rattling, things blowing around in the yard, loose shed doors banging shut, that sort of thing.

We'll also have to look out for possibly damaging winds in some areas starting before dawn Friday and lasting much of the day. Details are iffy, but there could be some areas of downed branches, trees and power lines across most of Vermont and surrounding areas Friday.  I imagine a lot of gusts will be in the 50 mph range.

Saturated soft soil also makes it easier for trees to uproot in strong winds.

Behind the storm, we get into a sustained period of chilly weather.  Definitely not like anything we've seen since April. But it will be very typical of November.

Daytime highs starting Saturday and lasting well into next week will only reach the 40s, with lows in the upper 20s to mid 30s. It'll be unsettled, with scattered rain and snow showers around. Some of those snow showers will extend to valley floors, especially at night.  This chilly pattern might easily extend into the middle of November at least.

Deal with it, because at least the weather here is not as extreme as it is out west.

FRIGID ROCKIES, FIERY CALIFORNIA

The weather pattern that is bringing us the storm later this week and the colder air for the weekend is bringing bigger extremes to the west.

This pattern, which I told you about yesterday, features a big northward bulge in the jet stream in Alaska, and a sharp dip southward into the Rockies. Compact storms roll like bowling balls almost due southward into this dip, which have been bringing repeated snowfalls to the West.   Great Falls, Montana has already had more than 31 inches of snow this "winter" for instance.

Each of these "bowling balls" also bring batches of Arctic air.  A high mountain valley, at an elevation of around 8,000 feet, might have set a national record for the coldest October reading on record in the Lower 48. Peter Sinks, Utah got down to 34.7 below zero!  Brrrr!

Denver, Colorado, hasn't been any warmer than the low 20s since early Sunday morning and won't get warmer than that until Thursday.  A winter storm warning is up for the Denver area today, with six to 12 inches of snow in the forecast. Record lows of near zero area expected later this week.

That's way too early for me.

These "bowling ball" disturbances I've describing also increase the pressure gradient between the California coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains and other hills. That's what's been producing the Santa Ana winds in southern California, which has been causing those destructive fires.

It's only going to get worse over the next couple of days.  Santa Ana winds of 30 to 55 mph with gusts to 80 mph on the higher hills are producing another round of extreme fire risk later today through Friday. This is near record territory for the strength of the Santa Anas.

New and existing fires will spread like crazy.   Embers from these fires will fly long distances to start new fires.  Remember, these exceedingly dry winds have been going on and off for a month now, so it's made everything in southern California super arid.  This is NOT going to be a good couple of days there.

While Watching California Burn, Wishing We Could Send Vermont's Dreary Downpours To Them

Yesterday was as dreary a day as you can get in Vermont.

A foreboding, stormy, gloomy late autumn day Sunday
in my St. Albans, Vermont yard.

Stuck inside, I watched videos depicting parts of California burning amid arid, blowtorch gales. A few of the videos are at the bottom of this post.

 I also watched yet another drenching storm soak Vermont, keeping me from doing my outdoor autumn chores. It was a classic, dark, wet, foreboding late October day as we race toward winter.

I wished I could teleport all that rain and wetness to California.

Not that's it's been an ugly, awful month in Vermont. Quite the contrary.  We've had a lot of gorgeous days this autumn.  But the rainfall, especially in northern Vermont, is kind of impressive for October, which is normally a relatively dry month in Vermont.

A little over an inch of rain dropped into my unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans, Vermont, bringing the month's total to 6.4 inches. That surely must put us in the top 10 wettest list for Octobers. Again, we haven't had a lot of rainy days, really. It's just that this month, when it rains, it pours.

Burlington, Vermont so far has had less rain than right up along the Canadian border. The Queen City has had 5.14 inches as of last midnight. That doesn't place October in the top 10 wettest, but if the next storm comes early enough, on October 31, it could put this month in that top ten list.

The storminess here and the fires are related meteorologically. And climate change might have a hand in it.  When the Arctic is warm, it does seem the jet stream has more and bigger northward bulges and southward dips. And those patterns seem to get stuck.

This month, an enormous northward bulge in the jet stream has kept Alaska very toasty, at least by their standards.  What goes up must come down. So there's been a corresponding major dip in the jet stream into the Rockies and western Plains.

Which is why they've had some odd wintry cold fronts and snowstorms out in that neck of the woods.

The cold in the Rockies and the warmth in California has increased the pressure gradient between the West Coast warmth and Rockies cold.  Bigger pressure gradients mean more wind, which is in part why these periods of very gusty, dry downslope winds have brought fires to California.

That dip in the jet stream means there's a corresponding northward bulge further east, off the East Coast.  Which puts us Vermonters in a flow that comes from the southwest.  This arrangement allows storms to pull lots of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, so it rains hard.

Yet one more storm is coming along, as I said on Halloween and November 1.  Details are still sketchy, but there could be heavy rains and strong winds in and around Vermont with this one. We'll keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile, California keeps burning. The biggest danger today shifts toward the southern part of the state, especially near and north of Los Angeles. Already early this morning, a roaring wildfire developed near the 405 and Getty Center. It was rapidly spreading, a few houses were already on fire and there were hasty evacuations going on.

So the day doesn't look good at all in that region

Some videos:

A grass fire trapped cars on Interstate 5 near Sacramento. Some people had to run for their lives as their cars caught fire. Others looked for an escape route as traffic jammed amid the smoke and embers.

Here's somebody on that Sacramento freeway as the wildfire closes in, directing traffic onto a dirt side road that would help them escape the fire. Chaotic!



A dangerous fire developed in Vallejo, California, but firefighters eventually, somehow got the pper hand on it.  Here's what it looked like for awhile:



A home burning during the Kincade fire. Watch to near the end as a tree explodes dramatically overhead:

Dire Situation Unfolding In Northern California Wildfires Today

The Soda Rock Winery in Healdsburg, California in flames during
the Kincade fire this morning. Photo by Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images.

A lot of peoples worst fears are being realized in northern California today.

Wildfires, including the huge Kincade Fire, exploded overnight amid extreme Diablo winds gusting in some places past hurricane force, with relative humidities in the single digits. One wind gust of 91 mph was reported this morning near the Kincade fire.

This is about as extreme weather as you can get in wildfire situations, so it's sadly not surprising that things are falling apart quickly in northern California today.

The reporting from television station WPIX in the Bay Area early this morning is stunning.  Like this snippet of their reporting:

"By 3:30 a.m., a wall of fire ws rapidly approaching Windsor, triggering a frantic call from the Sonoma County Sheriff's department for residents - who had ignored a mandatory evacuation order Saturday, to flee now."

For some people, it might be too late to flee, which means I worry some people will die.  In the hard hit town of Geyserville, WPIX reported that high winds ahead of the fire toppled trees across roads, which would make a fast evacuation pretty much impossible. The WPIX reporter giving us this information was standing in front of the Soda Rock Winery, established in 1869 and during her report, fully engulfed in flames.

Seventy-nine structures, including 31 homes, have been confirmed destroyed, says KPIX. I'm sure that number will rise exponentially.

Evacuations ordered went out for a big chuck of Santa Rosa, Califoria, north of Highway 12 and west of Highway 101. By my reading of maps, that's roughly a quarter of the city of 175,000 people. The evacuations extend westward all the way westward to the Pacific Ocean, which makes me think officials think the out of control fire will race to the beach, too strong for anybody to stop it.

This Santa Rosa situation is particularly painful as that city was ravaged by a wildfire just two years ago that  killed 22 people and destroyed more than 4,600 homes.

People whose houses survived the 2017 Santa Rosa fire, or are just moving into rebuilt ones, are understandably traumatized, the Mercury News reports. 

In all, 90,000 people have been evacuated so far, and you can imagine the logistical nightmare that would entail

The Kincade fire started early this past week and was less than 15 percent contained when the winds whipped up this morning. It was breaking through those containment lines, with flames more than 100 feet tall torching trees on ridgetops.  Hot embers are flying in the wind well in advance of the main fire, causing spot fires that are rapidly growing.

Meanwhile, the fire risk, already high in southern California, will go to an extremely critical risk in some areas near Los Angeles tomorrow.  Extremely critical risk, like the one in northern California today, is the highest level of alert for wildfires. It's like a Category 5 hurricane, as compared to a Category 1 type. In other words, much, much worse.

Videos:

Terrifying video from the Los Angeles Times. Turn up the volume. Just the sound is incredible:


Here's the Soda Rock Winery in flames:

Unprecedented October Blizzard? Plus California Fires/Expensive Power Outage

The Wheat Ridge, Colorado police department posted this photo
of traffic nightmares in Colorado Thursday.

As we continue to enjoy a fabulous October in Vermont, imagine being slapped in the face with this dire set of warnings this time of year:

"Heavy snow is expected to continue today. For this entire event, one to three feet of snow is expected. 40 to 60 mph winds will occur today into Saturday, which will result in whiteout conditions  and large, impassable drifts.

Several days of impossible travel. Disruptions to travel will last through at least the weekend. Localized power outages Tree and structural damage from heavy snow loads...."

Such is life currently in central North Dakota, where an unprecedented early season blizzard has taken hold. The warning above came from the National Weather Service in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

That forecast office said they were pretty confident up to three feet of snow would fall, especially in areas around Devils Lake, in north-central North Dakota.  There's never been anything known like this in October there, even for a place that's known for its harsh winter weather.

In fact, there's a chance some North Dakota towns, and some right across the border in Canada, will have their largest snowstorm on record, for any time of year.

This will really screw farmers in this region, as not all crops were in by the time this hit, and livestock hadn't been sheltered for the winter year.  Plus, it's not as if farmers these days have it easy to begin with.

To make matters worse, the snow won't really melt very fast.  Temperatures in parts of North Dakota are forecast to stay under 40 degrees at least through next Thursday.

There have been an odd series of severe October snowstorms in the Dakotas lately. Just last year, right around this time in October, areas just west of Grand Forks, North Dakota had up to 17 inches of snow, causing lots of farm losses. (So they're going through this for the second year in a row.)

A devastating blizzard hit western South Dakota in early October, 2013, dumping more than four feet of snow in some areas.

Now, before some of you say this proves global warming doesn't exist, remember that it's warmer than normal in most parts of the world currently.

I'm also NOT saying climate change influenced this particular storm, or the other recent autumn snowstorms in the northern plains, but:  In general, with a warming climate, storms can work with more moisture than they used to, which means they can dump more precipitation than they used to.

If it's cold enough, that could mean more snow than might have fallen in the past. This is all conjecture in this instance, but worth noting.

CALIFORNIA FIRE/BLACKOUT

As expected, wildfires broke out in California amid, hot, dry windy conditions. One fire early this morning jumped over and closed two major freeways near Los Angeles.  Several homes were reported burning in Grenada Hills, as news about this fire was breaking early this morning.

Another fire yesterday blasted through a mobile home park and destroyed dozens of homes.

The precautionary power blackouts by PG&E in California this week could cost businesses and homeowner up to $1 billion, as the Weather Channel reports. PG&E shut off the electricity so that fires wouldn't start if high winds blew down power lines. Big fires, including the one that leveled Paradise, California and killed more than 80 people, were caused by falling and arcing power lines.

Off The Rails Weather Update: Big CA Power Outages, Plains Blizzard, Northeast Blast

A high risk of wildfires in California today has prompted
the state's biggest utility to cut power to large areas
so that winds don't create arcing power lines that
would set dangerous fires. 

This is another one of those weeks when big sections of the United States are getting off-the-rails weather.

The Upper Plains and parts of the Rockies are set up for a big winter storm and single digit temperatures (in October!) Coastal New England and parts of the Middle Atlantic States are gearing up for a big hit by an odd, really strong ocean storm. And California is set for huge power failures. The utilities are shutting off the juice to prevent arcing power lines and wildfires as winds there pick up.  

Once again, we here in Vermont are pretty much escaping all this drama, as we will be blessed with seasonable temperatures, some sun, especially north and very little rain.

Let's start with California:

Pacific Gas and Electric has been blamed for some devastating, deadly wildfires in California in recent years, as the Weather Channel reports. This includes the extreme fire that pretty much leveled the town of Paradise, California and killed 86 people last year.

In parts of northern and central California, extremely critical fire weather conditions are forecast later today, according to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center Fire Weather Outlook. 

Winds could gust as high as 60 mph, and relative humidities are forecast to drop into the single digits. If a power line snaps in the wind and arcs and sparks, you have another big wildfire on your hands.

PG&E plans to cut power to as many as 800,000 homes and businesses in the fire risk region, and some of these outages might last for days. If there's no juice flowing in the lines and they snap in the wind, nothing bad will happen, goes the logic.

The danger of wildfires will continue Thursday in northern and central California, and ramp up in southern California, too. leading to the risk of more precautionary power outages.

PLAINS SNOW/COLD

Heavy, wet snow caused a lot of tree damage in Spokane, Washington
overnight. Photo by Liz Kishimoto/Spokesman-Review

As expected that winter storm is cranking up in the Rocky Mountains and northern Plains.  Parts of North Dakota could see close to two feet of snow out of this, which is incredible for mid-October.

A huge area of the nation, especially for October, is under winter storm warnings and watches. These extend from western Montana to northwest Minnesota and south to the northwestern corner of Nebraska.

The storm's cold front will be impressive as it crosses the Plains and upper Midwest.  I can foresee temperatures dropping by 20 or 30 degrees in an hour or so in some places.

Denver, Colorado won't get much snow out of this. But after 80 degree temperatures today, readings could be as low as 10 degrees Thursday night. But by Saturday, the temperature in Denver should pop back up to the low 60s.  Talk about whiplash weather!

The storm extended west as far as Spokane, Washington, where more than 3 inches of wet, heavy snow falling on trees still holding on to their leaves caused lots of power failures.

The snowstorm is also socking the southern Plains of Canada as well. In all areas hit by this storm, there are going to be a lot of livestock and crop losses.

NEW ENGLAND STORM

Thank goodness this long-anticipated ocean storm won't hug the coast but stay offshore. Otherwise, it would be a disastrous storm.

Even so, with the soon-to-be-huge, intense storm spinning out there offshore, it's destined to cause a lot of headaches, especially on Cape Cod and the Islands, parts of Long Island and maybe coastal New Jersey, too.

They've already shut down the ferry to Block Island, Rhode Island in anticipation of gale force winds and high seas.

Up to eight inches of rain might fall on southeastern Massachusetts, where flood watches, coastal flood watches and high wind warnings are in effect.

Storms Were A Bust; Burning Amazon, Tropical Storm Chantal

Water drops rest on one of my Country Club variety day lilies as
the evening sun somes out Wednesday in St. Albans, Vermont.
Areas south of me got much more rain than my gardens did.

Ahead of yesterday's weather, I asked in this blog thingy if it would be boomer or bust. It could have gone either way.

Well, it was a bust, except in far southern Vermont.  Good news if you don't like wind damage to trees and powerlines and such. Bad news if you wanted a lot of rain.

Most of Vermont did manage some weak thunderstorms and most places got some decent rains.

I missed out up here in St. Albans, Vermont with only 0.2 inches. Though we did squeeze out a brief shower this morning for a bit of additional wetting.

Enjoy it, because for most of us, it's not going to rain again for several days.

The storms did prove to be pretty intense further south, including the far two southern counties of Vermont. Tornado warnings went up west of Saratoga Springs, New York, near Lawrence, Massachusetts and near Hartford, Connecticut, but I'm not aware of any confirmed touchdowns.

Today, the actual cold front will come through, so we'll transition during the day from the humid stickiness of this morning to a dry, comfortable evening.

There will be that hint of autumn in the air, especially Friday and Saturday, with high temperatures just making it into the low 70s for many of us, with most of us getting into the 40s at night.

AMAZON BURNING

Smoke from Amazon fires can be seen from space, as you
can see from this satellite photo via The Weather Channel.

A much, much  more serious situation than strong thunderstorms is unfolding in the Amazon rain forest now.

As NPR reports, more than 74,000 fires erupted in the Amazon this year, with 36,000 or so starting within the past month. Big cities like Sao Paulo, Brazil, are getting pretty smoked out by these fires.

Subsistence farming and ranching is responsible for much of the Amazon deforestation and fires, and it hasn't helped that the relative new far right wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has railed against enviromental regulations because he thinks it hurts economic development. He has also cut funding and staff to environmental agencies, says NPR.

NPR and other news agencies also say Bolsonaro has baselessly accused NGO's of setting the Amazon fires as revenge against his administration for cutting funding to them. Which is rich. So the NGO's who are trying to save the Amazon are burning it down in a snit.

Bolsonaro sounds a lot like a United States politician whos name rhymes with Frump, but what do I know?

We've been fretting all summer over worrisome wildfires in the Arctic, Siberia and parts of northern Canada, but the Amazon fires could be worse.  The Amazon sucks a lot of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Destroy the forest, and release the CO2 into the atmosphere to boot, and you get more bad climate change news.

Sigh.

TROPICAL STORM CHANTAL

By now, the Atlantic Ocean should be beginning to bubble up with tropical systems, storms and hurricanes. It looked like this year we might have gotten through a rare August without an Atlantic tropical storm.  But then....

Chantal formed the other day at around 40 degrees north latitude, which is awfully far north for a tropical storm to form. It is only one of six tropical storms since at least 1950 to form that far north - basically southeast of Newfoundland, as the Category 6 blog notes. 

This weak tropical storm was able to get going because it was just on the northern edge of the warm Gulf Stream. (Tropical storms and hurricanes need warm water to survive.)

Chantal was always a fairly minimal tropical storm, with top winds in the 40 mph range. It's expected to die out over the central Atlantic any minute now.  However, there are signs that the tropical Atlantic is awakening, so in the coming weeks we're going to have to watch for more tropical storms and hurricanes - ones potentially more threatening than the isolated and lame Chantal.

Siberian Fires Are Another Climate Change Worry

Forests in Siberia are burning at unprecedented rates this summer,
causing all kinds of ecological havoc. Photo from Tass via Getty Images

Yesterday, I talked about the big meltdown going on across Greenland's ice sheet, which is of course bad news.

Today, more bad news. As you might have heard in some news reports, there are huge, HUGE wildfires going on in Siberia.

Why should we care, you might ask. Hardly anybody lives there, and it's so far away. It's not impacting our lives, is it?

Well, short term it's affecting our lives a little, and long term, is contributing to bigger problems associated with climate change.

So far, according to Vox, 15,000 square miles of Siberia have gone up in flames this year. That's about the size of Maryland.

Smoke from the fires is choking nearby cities, causing health problems for many. The smoke is circling much of the Northern Hemisphere. Here in Vermont, we can all agree that Friday was a gorgeous day: Clear skies, warm sun, low humidity, a perfect beach day. But did you notice the sort of hazy quality to the sky? It wasn't exactly a robin egg blue. More of an ashy color.

Most of that haze was caused by smoke from Siberia.

That haze contains little particles of soot that are raining down everywhere. Right here in Vermont, it's not a big deal, because there's too little of it to be much of a threat to anything.

But some of the soot is coming down on what's left of the Arctic ice this year, on the Greenland ice caps and glaciers throughout places like Canada, the Arctic and Europe.  The soot darkens the ice. Pure white ice deflects sunlight. Darker ice draws in the sun's warmth, leading to faster melting.

The soot will always be there. So, if pure white snow falls on top during the winter, that's a good thing. Unless all that snow melts next summer and the sooty snow is exposed to the sun again. That means faster melting next year, and years to come, too.

The fires are contributing to likely further increases in global temperatures, too. Smithsonianmag.com reports that wildfires across the Arctic belched 50 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in June alone. That's about the same as Sweden's total annual carbon emissions.

Some of the fires are burning in Arctic peat bogs. Normally, they are wet and help contain the spread of fires. But early snow melt and hotter summer temperatures have led the peat to start burning as well. Peat contains carbon that's been stored there for decades or centuries. The peat fires are releasing that stored carbon into the atmosphere, as Smithsonian notes. 

It's a viscious loop.  Warming contributes to more Arctic fires. Those Arctic fires warm the atmosphere more, leading to even drier, hotter conditions up there, leading to more fires, more warmth, etc. etc.

As Vox notes, there are wildfires in Siberia every year.  But the fires this year, and in recent years, have been bigger and badder than in the past.

OK, have a cheered you up yet?

Europe Heat Sets All-Time Records Again, Plus More Bad Climate News

Forecast map of the departure from normal in Europe for expected
high temperatures today. Areas that are whitish will be about
30 degrees hotter than normal, which is uncharted territory
for these regions. 

The second super intense heat wave of the summer is now underway in western Europe, and like in the June heat wave, all-time record hot temperature records are falling.

This isn't your grandfather's heat wave. This one is much worse.

Germany broke its national all-time record high Wednesday when one town reached 105 degrees. Belgium had its hottest day on record with a reading of 103.8 degrees. The Netherlands also broke its all time record, reaching 102.7 degrees.

The city of Bordeaux, France, reached its all time record high of 106.1 degrees.

Incredibly, these new records are in danger of falling today as the heat wave, if anything might grow more intense. And expand. Paris, France, might break its all-time heat record. So might the United Kingdom.

Already this summer, 25 percent of France's weather stations have reported all time record high temperatures, according to the Category 6 blog. Forty-four of Germany's 490 stations have also done so, and that will surely increase today.

Most European homes don't have air conditioning, so this is a dangerous situation. Governments have learned from other, recent deadly heat waves and have set up cooling centers, air conditioned places and other options for vulnerable people to go.

By Saturday, cooler air will undercut the heat ridge and push it north into Scandanavia. That would probably make all time record highs fall up there, too.  It's possible the heat dome will extend as far as the North Pole, which isn't exactly great news for the already scant Arctic sea ice pack.

There's other types of climate related trouble and news, too:

ARCTIC FIRES

The center of this heat wave will move to Scandanavia and parts of the
Arctic this weekend, which is bad news for the ice up there. 

Extensive probably unprecedented wildfires burning in Alaska, northern Canada and Siberia and cloaking the Arctic in smoke, Forbes reports. Wildfires in such northern areas are bad to begin with, but these could contribute a bit toward making climate change worse.'

Especially in areas were peat is on fire, the blazes are belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which adds to the surplus that's causing climate change in the first place.

Soot particles from the fire are landing on Arctic ice. Bright white ice reflects sunlight, but darker material draws the sun's warmth in. The soot would therefore make the ice melt faster in the summer than it otherwise would.

ICELAND GLACIER DEATH

An Icelandic glacier dubbed OK is officially dead, the apparent victim of climate change. Summers in Iceland have gotten hotter in recent years and decades. That means the island's 400 or so glaciers are in retreat.

OK is the first of Iceland glaciers to be declared dead but it won't be the least. A glacier "dies" when it becomes so thin that it can't move on its own because it doesn't have enough weight.

According to Slate, the OK glacier probably died several years ago, and there's likely a few other glaciers in Iceland that have also died.

PAST CLIMATE CHANGE SMALLER

People who say climate change doesn't exist point to other climate shifts that happened before we started pushing all that CO2 into the atmosphere. They point to the Roman Warm Period between the years 0 and 300 AD, the Dark Ages cold period around the year 500 AD, the Little Ice Age in the 1300s through 1700s and the Medieval Warm Period around the year 1000 as examples.

According to Science News, these past climate events were regional, covering only sections of the Earth. That's unlike the current global warming, says Science. They report that 98 percent of the Earth is warmer now that it has been at any time in the previous 2,000 years.

This new study appears in the journal Nature.  The scientists conducting this study came to their conclusion by using proxies for temperatures from tree rings, glacier ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, cave deposits and historical documents.

Yet Another Smoke Attack In New England As Canada Burns Once Again

A hazy sunset caused by Canadian forest fires, as seen
from St. Albans last summer. Haze and smoke attacks
in Vermon from Canadian fires seem to be on the
uptick in recent uears. 

The brilliant blue skies we enjoyed here in Vermont Sunday and Monday, and on into Tuesday morning faded into a sickly greyish color Tuesday afternoon as smoke from Canadian wildfires billowed high overhead.

The haze is still there this morning, at least to an extent, and could get worse again this afternoon.

Most of the smoke is high overhead, but you might have noticed the horizontal view Tuesday afternoon got a bit hazy, too. That was basically fallout - tiny smoke particles drifting back to Earth. That's how these smoke plumes eventually dissipate.

The trouble is the fires keep burning, so smoke keeps going up, and it perpetuates itself.

These tiny particles in the haze aren't exactly healthy to breathe. There wasn't enough haze and pollution yesterday in Vermont to cause any particular health risks. Today, it's possible that enough smoke could reach the surface to bother people with underlying health risks, so we should keep an eye on that.

You might even smell smoke at times today. Don't worry, it's not your house burning. Or maybe worry, because Canada is burning.

Obviously not all of it.  Extensive fires in Ontario have led to widespread smoke in the Midwest and eastern United States.  Other fires in western Alaska are choking that region in smoke as well.

In this air quality forecast for today from the EPA, the
air won't exactly be clean. Areas in yellow have moderate
amounts of particulates. Though not at super hazardous
levels, people with underlying health issues might
want to avoid overexerting outdoors today.
Especially since it will also be very warm.

Extreme dryness, warm air and severe thunderstorms with lots of dry lightning have sparked most of those large Canadian wildfires.

It does seem these "smoke attacks" here in Vermont and the rest of the United States are getting more frequent.

Which makes sense, since Canadian and western United States wildfires have trended upward in size and intensity in recent years.

 Climate change might well be influencing this. In Canada, warmer weather allows things to dry out earlier in the spring, extending the wildfire season.

Hotter, drier weather than in the past and lots of lightning strikes in the summer are fueling these fires.

For selfish reason, that's a shame. We often get breaks in summer heat and humidity via cold fronts from Canada, which gives us the perfect blue skies like we saw this past Sunday.

But now, Canada seems to give us smoke and haze, too. I want the blue sky back.

Here We Go Again: Distant Wildfire Smoke Hazing Up Our Skies

Smoke from wildfires in Alberta gave a brassy hue to
the evening skies over St. Albans, Vermont Thursday. 

Did it seem hazy to you here in Vermont yesterday afternoon?

You were on to something. Smoke from wildfires in Alberta was high overhead, introducing yet another summer in which clear blue skies are marred by smoke.

To be fair, Thursday wouldn't have been a pure bluebird sky day anyway. High and mid level clouds were coming in ahead of a cold front that was to our north and a storm system scooting by to our south.

But smoky haze gave a brassy hue to the atmosphere, especially yesterday evening. With a northwest flow aloft occasionally coming through over the next week, I wouldn't be surprised if we have other hazy days.

It still seems sort of hazy out there this morning behind that cold front.

It's not just us. Those Alberta fires are pushing smoke into much of the United States. Smoky skies have affected much of the northern Plains states  and southern Canadian prairies as well.

The smoky skies have been occasionally spreading to far-flung places like Vancouver, Minneapolis, Toronto, Detroit and Kansas City.  Smoke has also been spreading north to the Arctic Circle and into northeastern Alaska. There's a great smoke map that allows you to track the smoke by hitting this hyperlink. 

The fires up in Alberta are huge and out of control. At least 10,000 people in the remote region have been evacuated, and there's little sign that they fires will be under control any time soon.

Wildfires do seem to be on the increase and the season is lasting longer, due in large part to climate change. Unfortunately, we've had to get used to hazy, smokey skies in recent years as large fires repeated pump smoke into the atmosphere.

Springtime wildfires in the North are increasing because the snow melts earlier in the season, things dry out faster so fires can start. There have also been substantial wildfires in Siberia this spring.

While the smoke is rarely dense enough in Vermont to cause health problems, any level of particulate pollution in the atmosphere isn't good for us.

Mostly, it's just a let down when you want a brilliant blue sky and you get a sickly haze. It's not that we won't have bluebird days this summer or in future summers. It's just that we'll have to get used to experiencing fewer of them.

On the bright side, I suppose, the wildfire smoke can create more colorful and interesting sunrises and sunsets. You always have to find the positive somewhere, right?

Truth And Fiction: Assessing The Worst Wildfire In California History

Paradise gone" This neighborhood in Paradise, California was wiped
out along with most of the rest of the town by the Camp Fire. 

California firefighters have finally getting the upper hands on the wildfires plaguing the state, including the now-famous Camp Fire in northern California, which has become the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

Plus, it's been raining the past couple of days  That's great news, and greatly contributed to the fact the fire was declare 100 percent contained today.

But the rain has its own share of risks. More on that in a bit.

Now that the fires have abated, this gives us a chance to take stock and take a deep dive into this disaster. There has been some misinformation, confusion and doubts about the fires. It's always good to try and get the facts, because lessons need to be learned. What follows is not perfect, and reasonable people might disagree with me. But we really should have the discussion.

WORST CASE SCENARIO, FOR NOW

Just when people thought things couldn't possibly get any worse than the Tubbs Fire last year, which killed 22 people and destroyed 5,643 structures, we had this year's so-called Camp Fire.

This illustration is of the Peshtigo, Wisconsin wildfire of 1871 that killed
at least 1,200 people. It shows some people trying take refuge in
a nearby river. It's the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history.
Are deadly wildfires making a comeback?

As of this writing, the Camp Fire has killed a confirmed 85 people, the most deadly wildfire in California history and the nation's deadliest in more than a century.

They're still looking for hundreds of missing people. We don't know how many of those are just lost in the shuffle after the chaos of the evacuation, and how many were lost to the flames.

The fire destroyed some 13,000 buildings, including virtually the entire town of Paradise, California, with a pre-fire population of about 27,000.

This was America's worst wildfire in a century.  Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, there was a spate of even deadlier fires in the United States. An 1871 wildfire around Peshtigo, Wisconsin killed some 1,200 people in 1871. A 1918 wildfire in Minnesota killed roughly 1,000 people. Another Minnesota fire in 1894 claimed at least 418 lives, notes Jeff Masters in the Category 6 blog.

While the United States has always had wildfires, blazes that would kill scores or hundreds of people became rare in the 20th century.

Now, these horrible death fires seem to be on a comeback. I'm aware of just four wildfires that each killed 15 or more people in the era between 1930 and 1990.

There was an uptick in such fires beginning in the 1990s, and now they're even more frequent. Category 6 blog lists five fires that have killed at least 13 people just since 2003. (This includes the Camp Fire.)

Something seems to be going on. Too many people moving to forest lands? That's only a small part of the story. Poor forest management? We'll get into that in this post, but that's not the whole picture either. What about climate change?

 CLIMATE CHANGE DIDN'T "CAUSE" THIS FIRE

In the late summer and autumn, central and northern California are often plagued by something called Diablo winds.

Air circulates up from the deserts further south, so this air is very dry. The wind hits the eastern slopes of the mountains in northern California then heads westward, up and over these ridges.

Once over the tops of the mountains, the winds continue westward, gaining momentum as they head down hill. The gusts get stronger and stronger. As the air races downhill, it actually gets even drier.

A small spark can start a nasty wildfire under these conditions There are reports there was a problem with a PG&E high tension line near Paradise that might have sparked the fire. If that's the case, the Diablo winds took advantage of this situation and the conflagration was borne.

Most wildfires are caused by humans. They haven't really come up with a cause for the Tubbs Fire yet, but it also might have been a PG&E line failure.  Teenagers playing with matches might have caused the Gatlinburg, Tennessee wildfire in 2017, but arson charges against the teens have been dropped.

Once the fires have started though, a lot of them have become much more extreme than in the past 100 years. That finally brings us to climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE VERY LIKELY MADE THE FIRE MUCH WORSE.

Northern California was tinder dry (brown shades) on the days leading
up to and on the day of the Camp Fire 

Even though climate change did not cause the Camp Fire, it probably took what would have been a relatively ugly but manageable local situation and turned it into a calamity.

UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted:

"If Northern California had received anywhere near the typical amount of autumn precipitation this year (around 4-5 in. of rain near #CampFire point of origin). explosive fire behavior & stunning tragedy in #Paradise would almost certainly not have occurred."

Swain then went on in his very helpful Twitter thread:

"Rainy season has started late this year in California...again. While autumn precipitation isn't usually (a) huge fraction of overall annual average, it's hugely important to ecosystems & bringing fire season-ending moisture. This yr., autumn precip was <20-30% of avg."

Swain added on Twitter: "Objective indicators of vegetation dryness and potential fire intensity were are record high levels for the date this week in the vicinityh of #CampFire -- and would have been very high even for peak summer levels -- at a time of year when the rainy season is usually ramping up."

Droughts and late starts to rainy seasons happen, with or without global warming. But climate change seems to have made these conditions more likely in the western United States, which would make this type of fire more likely.

Strong downslope winds propelled the Camp Fire, but those winds often happen this time of year. Had moisture been close to normal the winds wouldn't have been a big deal in a damp forest.

In southern areas of California, things have really dried out in recent years, too. As Sierraclub.org points out:

"Unusually dry conditions have prevailed in the Santa Monicas during recent years. Based on rainfall totals since 1877, 11 out of the last 15 years have seen below average rains. During the 2006-2007 season, only 3.21 inches of rain fell, the lowest ever recorded."

Climate change tends to make things hotter and drier in areas like California. Scientists are also increasingly embracing one effect that climate change seems to be having: That of a "stuck" jet stream

I've mentioned this idea in this blog before, but to review: The jet stream, which is a river of high speed air, steers weather systems, mostly west to east across the Northern Hemisphere. A healthy jet stream thrives on a very cold Arctic contrasting with hot tropics.

The Arctic is warming up much faster than the rest of the world, so that contrast is diminishing. The result seems to be a slower and wavier jet stream that is more likely to get "stuck" in position.

Abnormally strong northward bulges in the jet stream, like California had most of this year and New England and eastern Canada had this summer, create long lasting heat waves and often, droughts. Abnormally deep southward dips bring repeated shots of cold air southward, keeping areas strangely frigid, kind of like we in the Northeast have been going through in recent weeks.

Even a weak dip in the jet stream can cause havoc if it get's stuck too long. This summer. such a weak, stuck dip contributed to record rains in the Mid-Atlantic states.  Bottom line: Stuck jet streams are bad, and could become even more likely as the planet warms. That could contribute to more and worse wildfires in some areas, epic floods in others.

TRUMP WAS (MOSTLY) WRONG WHEN HE BLAMED FOREST MANAGEMENT

Donald Trump surveying the fire destruction in Paradise, California.
He is mostly wrong when he attributes poor forest
management to the disaster. 

OK, I'll give Donald Trump a little credit here before I start criticizing. In some areas, there's been a buildup of small saplings, brush and other things on the forest floor that can make fires more intense and more likely.

That's why there's been an increase in "controlled burns" which are intentionally set and watched when there's little danger of them becoming catastrophes.

Trump's Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, blamed the wildfires out west on lefty environmentalists:

He said: "Every year we watch our forests burn, and every year there is a call for action. Yet, when action comes, and we try to thin forests of dead and dying timber, or we try to sustainably harvest timber from dense and fire-prone areas, we are attacked with frivolous litigation from radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods."

First of all, that's insulting. I can't imagine even the most radical environmentalists experiencing any joy or satisfaction about the extreme loss of life and destruction from the recent wildfires.

Zinke is also on shaky factual ground. As the New York Times points out, Zinke is right that there are a lot of dead and dying trees in California. Drought and heat contributed to that. So did an influx of devastating insects that survive better in hotter climates. However, it's not the dead and dying trees that catch fire so easily. At least initially.

They're too big. When you start your fireplace, you don't hold a match to a big log and expect it burn. You start with small stuff, kindling, and work your way up. Forest fires work that way, too.

Besides, when you thin a forest, you risk creating an explosion of highly flammable weeds and shrubs on the forest floor. Fewer trees mean less shade, and these kinds of plants can thrive.

As the New York Times notes, thinning of forests in California leads to the growth of something called cheatgrass, which is highly flammable when it dries out.

On the edge of Paradise, California, which was destroyed in the wildfire, forest thinning happened about a decade ago. When the fires started earlier this month, there was plenty of cheatgrass there to burn.

And no, raking the forest like you would your lawn won't help. Finlanders don't spend their days raking forest, by the way, unless they do so to mock Trump.

The poor forest management argument really falls apart when we're talking about southern California.

The fires in southern California burned through chaparral, brush, grass and whatnot. There are no forests to speak of to burn around Malibu and Thousand Oaks. You can't mismanage a non-existent forest.

This lack of grace and knowledge by the President certainly ticked some people off

For instance, The Pasadena Fire Association tweeted this:

"Mr. President, with all due respect, you are wrong. the fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management. Come to SoCal and learn the facts & help the victims Scott Austin, Pres IAFF 809."

Brush fires have always been a real risk in southern California during the autumn. The stuff that grew during the previous winter and early spring rain season has always dried out by autumm. You've heard the song "It Never Rains In Southern California." The song is right, at least until usually December of so.

COUGHING IN THE SMOKE, OR WORSE

Air quality was dangerously bad during the Camp Fire as smoke spread
through the San Francisco bay area and much of northern and
central California. Photo by Eric Rosberg/AP

There are plenty of victims dealing with the Camp Fire whose homes were untouched and who live dozens or even hundreds of miles from the wildfire zone.

Smoke from the fires have settled over much of California during the Camp Fire, before the rains came in.  The San Francisco Bay area, often a place where you could breathe fresh, clean Pacific Ocean air, had the worst air quality in the world in the days after the Camp Fire.

This air pollution is yet another example of how fires, likely made worse by climate change, can affect so many unsuspecting people.

The smoke is regarded as "particulate" pollution. The smoke consists of tiny particles that can embed themselves in people's lungs, causing current health problems in people exposed to the smoke. This mostly effects the elderly, children and people with existing respiratory ailments. People will continue to get sick a couple weeks after the smoke clears, but these immediate effects will wane.

However, the long term health effects of breathing all this thick smoke are not entirely known, says NBC News:

"Longer-term impacts of such exposure, meanwhile, are little understood. Few studies have been conducted to track the helath of people months, and years, after they have been exposed to high concentrations of 'particulate' pollution. The emissions are similar to toxic particles released with the burning of fossil fuels. But fire fumes could pose an additional risk, because they include chemicals released when homes and cars - and their attendant insulation, plastic and metal - burn."

Of course, the vast majority of the smoke consists of burned grass, trees and brush, not human-created chemicals, so that's vaguely a good thing, I suppose.

We do know that long term exposure from smoke from things like wildfires increased the rates of chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function, lung cancer and heart disease, but I don't exactly know how you define "long-term."

I'm guessing a few days of such pollution isn't all that bad in the long term, but if this kind of thing keeps happening, and people are repeatedly exposed to weeks of wildfire smoke, we might start to see some real long term effects. It won't be as bad as somebody who has smoked a pack of cigarettes each day for decades, but it still won't be great.

 WHY COULDN'T PEOPLE ESCAPE?

Desperate people fled on foot after cars became stuck on
congestion roads during the chaotic evacuation from the
Camp Fire in Paradise, California.
Photo by Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group.

As KQED reported, the town of Paradise had a detailed evacuation plan in case of a wildfire. In 2008, two wildfires burned right up to the edge of the community.

That prompted the municipal government to draft an evacutation plan. Some neighborhood residents fleeing a fire would drive down certain roads, others would drive out of danger using different routes.

The community even held a mock evacuation during the morning rush hour, to mimic crowded roads in the middle of an emergency.

In this case, the best laid plans failed to work. People who were trying to flee got stuck on gridlocked roads. Panicked people got out of their cars and tried to flee on foot. Most of those made it. Some didn't. A number of people burned to death in their cars.

You'd think a good plan in a fire-conscious community like Paradise would go better than this. The problem was, all 27,000 residents tried to flee at once. The fire came on so strong, so fast, so extensively, that everybody had to leave at once. It wasn't what was planned, what normally happens.

One neighborhood is threatened, so people there flee. The fire moves on, threatening another housing development, so those people go.

"I think their plan would have worked for the 97th percentile fire," Bill Stewart, co-directorof the Berkel Forests Program at UC Berkeleu told the Los Angeles Times. "It would have worked if they had six hours to move, instead of two."

Nobody planned on fires being this quick, this explosive, this fast-moving. It just wasn't within the realm of imagination. That had tragic results. This, perhaps is related to the climate change problem I discussed earlier.

Climate change is the present and future. But what happened in Paradise is also a legacy of history. The roads in the area were laid out by gold miners and railroads decades or a century or more ago. The roads were designed to weave their way through canyons, hills and ridges to access minerals, not evacuate lots of people in an emergency.

That said, there were plenty of heroes.

PEOPLE COME THROUGH, BIG TIME

Nurse Allyn Pierce drove through Paradise, California wildfires
repeatedly to evacuate people. The truck (left) was scorched and
melted after the fire. Toyota Motor Company heard about
Pierce's bravery and gave him a new truck (right).

As always in these mega disasters, real heroes emerged. There's too many to cite here, but I'll offer some examples.

There's the bus driver who somehow got 20 kids about of a Paradise elementary school and drove through the flames to get them out.


The kids were choking on the smoke, so he too, off his t-shirt. He and teachers aboard the bus tore the shirt into little pieces, soaked them in water and put the wet pieces of cloth over the kids' mouths to protect them from the smoke.

I also have to give props to a Paradise, California nurse named Allyn Pierce, who ferried people out by driving through flames, twice. The trips left his Toyota Tundra truck melted and scorched, pretty much destroyed.

The Toyota Motor Company got wind of this and will give Pierce a new truck, gratis. Small gesture in the grand scheme of the tragedy, but it makes me and everybody else feel good, so it's exactly what was needed.

People far from the fire zone stepped up, too, sometimes in surprising ways.

The other day, Peter Sagal (Host of "Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me! on NPR) tweeted, "People are strange, sometimes in delightful ways."

Sagal was referring to the actor James Woods.  Woods had basically turned himself in recent years into a particularly annoying pro-Trump Twitter troll.

Then the California fires flared up this month. Woods turned his Twitter account into this unending emergency response and relief effort. Woods tweeted day and night, forwarding pleas for help from fire victims and sending those who wanted to help in the right direction to the right people.

I was impressed. As were many others. As is I guess human nature during catastrophes, Woods rightly abandoned political ideology and just reached out to help. One of the people he helped was the actress Alyssa Milano.

Milano had been evacuated from her southern California home by the wildfires, but she needed help getting her horses out of harm's way.

Woods and Milano are polar opposites, politically, and I'm sure they've had negative things to say to one another. But the two cooperated, the horses are safe and everybody's that much happier.

THEN THERE ARE THE IDIOTS 

Of course, there are a few idiots that always make things worse. We got into it a little bit with Trump and his minions. But of course there are worse people.

Again, there are too many to do an exhaustive review, but on the bright side there seems to be far fewer villians than heroes.

One example would be Dave Johnson, the GOP chair of Columbiana County, Ohio. Earlier this  month,   he posted to social media images of the fire with the message "God's Punishment to Liberal California." Another message on the photo said: "Hell on Earth, brought to you by the liberals in California."

Frankly, as a gay guy, I'm a bit relieved by this. The "religious" right, if you can call them that, have long blamed the gays for every single disaster that has ever befallen the world. As if somebody like me had that much power.

Now, they've broaden the blame out, so it's anybody who's liberal who's to blame. Funny, I don't see any footage of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rampaging through California as evil arsonists, but what do I know?

Johnson deleted his posts after a public outcry.

NOW THE RAINS COME

The rain started in northern California this past week. As of today, one to two inches of rain has fallen on the fire area, and a lot more is on the way. The rain has cleared nuch of the smoke, tamped own remaining fire and is preventing new ones from starting.

With steep hillsides stripped bare by the fires and even underground tree roots incinerated, there's not much to hold the soil in place. We're at the start of the California rainy season, so for the next several months we'll have to worry about more devastation from mudslides and debris flows in areas where the fires burned over.

Especially in northern California, where it's cooler, little or no new vegetation will start growing until next spring. It's going to be a dangerous winter.

Now, some videos.

Here's a video tour of the Paradise area. Notice how hit and miss things were:



This is an intense video of a father and sons trying to get out of Paradise after the fire. They're trying to hold it together as they think they're out of danger, then they're back in danger, then out, then in.
You can hear the extreme relief at the end when they begin to emerge from the darkness
and see blue sky up ahead, meaning they were finally safe:



Here's an absolutely heartbreaking CBS Morning News report of a woman, a nurse at the local hospital, who didn't think she'd make it out alive, but somehow did. However, her father's house
is just ashes now, and that father is missing.