Summer Wildfires and Air Quality

"Think of yourself as dead.

You have lived your life.

 Now, take what is left, and live it properly.

What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness." - Marcus Aurelius

 It's that time of year once again in the US West when wildfires have a chance to get going.  Summer heat and low humidity have dried out the vegetation.  

There are a few different ecosystems in the region, and they behave differently when a wildfire develops.  The desert, grasslands, and farms don't have a lot of fuel, but what vegetation they have dries out early in the season, and burns away very quickly.  The vegetation is easy to ignite, remains a hazard for most of the summer, and these areas can burn year after year - because grass grows back annually.  

Forests, on the other hand, are able to retain springtime moisture for longer periods of time.  It usually takes several weeks of heat and dry weather for them to become a fire hazard.  Once they dry out though, they become a massive source of fuel for intense wildfires.  Dried out pine trees, loaded with sap, are quick to catch fire.  Vaporizing sap can explode the tree and send embers for long distances.  The only good thing about a forest fire is that once burned, it will be several years before that area can sustain another massive fire.  The bad thing is that the soil can be heat-sterilized several inches under the surface.

In any event, it's that time of year again.  The air quality is bad.  Purple Air is a handy crowd-sourced website, where individuals purchase a PM-2.5 monitor and this data is aggregated and displayed.  The coverage isn't consistent, but there is enough data to figure out why you are congested and coughing :)

 Below:  There are mountains in the background, although you wouldn't know it, due to the opacity of the air at ground level.

 There is another handy interactive website, called Fire Weather Avalanche, (which gives you information about each topic) that shows the location of each wildfire.  You can click on an individual fire and get information such as date reported, current status, resources sent to it, likelihood of growth, and the total burn area.

 It's also interesting to use a real-time aircraft tracking app to watch the the air tankers engaged in wildfire suppression.  You can watch the aircraft that monitors the fire and calls in the tanker planes.  They will circle over the fire for hours on end, below.

You can watch the lead plane guide in each air tanker at the correct altitude and heading.  I suppose the fire commander tells the tanker pilot when to make the drop of retardant.  The yellow tanker plane is banking in behind the highlighted red lead plane.

And of course it's interesting to see them go overhead, loaded with fire retardant, or returning empty to refill.

Last summer I was able to get some really good pictures of them, as they were flying right over.

Never a good feeling to get these sorts of alerts, particularly when the nearest fire hydrant is miles away.

Below:  One of the fires a bit north of us.