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Re: California is on fire

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 10:37 pm
by lpm
The Bureau of Land Management is doing their best.

Unfortunately the Bureau of Land Management is often being referred to as the BLM over the radio.

The Trump cultists listen in on the radio chatter, hear BLM, and...

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 10:41 pm
by lpm
The stupid, it burns.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 4:30 am
by bolo
bolo wrote:
Thu Aug 20, 2020 7:15 pm
Aiui from a quick Google, the prisoner firefighters in California
(a) are all volunteers,
(b) do get paid, although not very much, and
(c) get the same training that entry-level professional firefighters get, which ought to give them a job qualification for when they get out.

Unfortunately some licensing restrictions make (c) less useful than it should be
California has just passed a law that allows prisoner firefighters to get their prison records expunged, to fix the "Unfortunately" bit of the above.
https://www.politico.com/states/califor ... se-9424131

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 8:57 am
by FlammableFlower
The images of San Francisco were amazing/shocking. Someone shared a drone video of the city set to the Bladerunner 2049 music. Scarily apt.

I wonder if it wake anyone up to climate change? Certainly not Trump who, whilst he's made some moves to help, is hardly being very forward about it.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 11:17 am
by Little waster
FlammableFlower wrote:
Sat Sep 12, 2020 8:57 am
Certainly not Trump who, whilst he's made some moves to help, is hardly being very forward about it.
Apparently he didn't want to spread panic.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:45 pm
by jimbob
A now-retired colleague of mine uses the Ventusky website for his sailing forecasts;

They also have air quality. Look at this for PM10s

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=29.7;-131.7;3&l=pm10

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:56 pm
by shpalman

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:56 pm
by Bird on a Fire
jimbob wrote:
Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:45 pm
A now-retired colleague of mine uses the Ventusky website for his sailing forecasts;

They also have air quality. Look at this for PM10s

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=29.7;-131.7;3&l=pm10
f.cking hell!! And I thought I used to smoke a lot.

One degree. Just one so far. We're probably gonna hit 3 in my lifetime the way things are going, which will be a hoot.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:05 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions': New Mexico sees massive migratory bird deaths
Over the past few weeks, various species of migratory birds are dying in "unprecedented" numbers of unknown causes, reported Martha Desmond, a professor at NMSU's Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology.

"It is terribly frightening," Desmond said. "We've never seen anything like this. ... We're losing probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of migratory birds."
The biologists guessed the cause might involve the wildfires ravaging the western U.S. and dry conditions in New Mexico.

"They may have been pushed out before they were ready to migrate," Desmond said. "They have to put on a certain amount of fat for them to be able to survive the migration. These birds migrate at night and they get up in the jet stream, and they might migrate for three nights in succession, they'll come down and they'll feed like crazy, put on more fat and go again."
"Rains of dead birds" wasn't on even my most pessimistic predictions for 2020.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:25 pm
by bmforre
In Norway opposition to windpower uses "windturbines kill birds" as one main argument. They overlook the gain for birds by keeping air cleaner and cooler.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:30 pm
by Brightonian
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:56 pm
jimbob wrote:
Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:45 pm
A now-retired colleague of mine uses the Ventusky website for his sailing forecasts;

They also have air quality. Look at this for PM10s

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=29.7;-131.7;3&l=pm10
f.cking hell!! And I thought I used to smoke a lot.

One degree. Just one so far. We're probably gonna hit 3 in my lifetime the way things are going, which will be a hoot.
Wow, what a fantastic site! It seems to have historical weather as well, which I didn't think was publicly available.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:33 pm
by Bird on a Fire
bmforre wrote:
Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:25 pm
In Norway opposition to windpower uses "windturbines kill birds" as one main argument. They overlook the gain for birds by keeping air cleaner and cooler.
They do kill a lot of birds if badly located. Luckily we know enough now to be able to stop that happening, and even things like painting one blade black seem to help.

I promise you that conservationists are not "overlooking" climate change! :roll:

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:35 pm
by jimbob
Brightonian wrote:
Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:30 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:56 pm
jimbob wrote:
Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:45 pm
A now-retired colleague of mine uses the Ventusky website for his sailing forecasts;

They also have air quality. Look at this for PM10s

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=29.7;-131.7;3&l=pm10
f.cking hell!! And I thought I used to smoke a lot.

One degree. Just one so far. We're probably gonna hit 3 in my lifetime the way things are going, which will be a hoot.
Wow, what a fantastic site! It seems to have historical weather as well, which I didn't think was publicly available.
I also decided to splash out the £2.99 per year subscription to the app.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 11:59 pm
by Bird on a Fire

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 6:54 pm
by dyqik
The sky here on Cape Cod is hazy white, reportedly from the fires 3000 miles west of here.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:49 pm
by bolo
dyqik wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 6:54 pm
The sky here on Cape Cod is hazy white, reportedly from the fires 3000 miles west of here.
Here in Virginia also. Cooling things down nicely, at least, unless that's just a coincidence.

No smoky smell, though, as it is apparently all at high altitude. The jet stream is bringing it this way, whereas lower level winds are blowing the smoke plumes visible in satellite images out into the Pacific. Or something. IANAM.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:58 pm
by jimbob
bolo wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:49 pm
dyqik wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 6:54 pm
The sky here on Cape Cod is hazy white, reportedly from the fires 3000 miles west of here.
Here in Virginia also. Cooling things down nicely, at least, unless that's just a coincidence.

No smoky smell, though, as it is apparently all at high altitude. The jet stream is bringing it this way, whereas lower level winds are blowing the smoke plumes visible in satellite images out into the Pacific. Or something. IANAM.
Not even that high altitude: Even by 3000m* it's pretty strong wind that direction,

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=38.7;-106.4 ... 0200915/21


*I'm assuming that's sufficient to clear most of the mountains in the Cascades and Rockies

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:14 pm
by bolo
Not sure about 3000m. Wikipedia's list of the highest peaks in the Rockies puts even number 100 at 3746m. But that's only the peaks--no idea how much air flow as a whole is affected.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:14 pm
by dyqik
bolo wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:14 pm
Not sure about 3000m. Wikipedia's list of the highest peaks in the Rockies puts even number 100 at 3746m. But that's only the peaks--no idea how much air flow as a whole is affected.
1000m above the ridges would be fairly safe as an estimate.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:17 pm
by dyqik
I'm not sure the sun should be that orange this far above the horizon.
download_20200915_181359_copy_1920x1080.jpg
download_20200915_181359_copy_1920x1080.jpg (354.38 KiB) Viewed 2451 times

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 1:32 am
by bolo
Fwiw, the WaPo says the haze over this area is above 20,000 feet, which is about 6,000 m.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/ ... -virginia/

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:29 am
by bagpuss
dyqik wrote:
Tue Sep 15, 2020 6:54 pm
The sky here on Cape Cod is hazy white, reportedly from the fires 3000 miles west of here.
I was shocked during my team managers/supervisors call yesterday. I'm the only non-US person on the call so I was basically just listening to the first 10 minutes as the others discussed the effects they were seeing - from one guy on the West Coast (not sure where but he was reporting air quality of 220 which meant nothing to me at the time but I've since looked it up and doesn't sound like fun) to those in the North East who were describing what you're saying here and that they've never seen that before. Colleague in Florida says she's seeing nothing - obviously the winds haven't been blowing that way. But she and I were the only ones who weren't seeing some kind of effect, among a team scattered all over the US (+ me in the UK).

Very scary stuff.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:19 am
by Little waster
bagpuss wrote:
Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:29 am

Very scary stuff.
By this point in 2020* Trump could stage a military coup in November and it would struggle to make the end-of-year review shows.

"We'll have to drop the bit on Supreme Leader Trump if we want to keep in the montage of Chris Evan's dick-pics, with backing vocals by Sarah Palin singing "Baby got back" dressed as a moose, otherwise we would need to cut back the the segment about the Christmas Day Invasion of the Space Centipedes"






*I mean we've now got a US race war back-lit by actual burning dumpsters filled with murder hornets, flanked by fire tornadoes, being lashed by hurricanes.

Go home 2020, you're drunk!

ETA: FFS I genuinely forgot about the global pandemic while putting together my "2020 is sh.t" diorama :oops: Talk about End-Times.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 10:00 am
by Bird on a Fire
It is scary stuff. It's also not even the "new normal", but a gentle beginning to the forthcoming effects of climate change.

In much the same way as sea ice is melting during summer and not being repleted during winter, forests (and grasslands, and wetlands, etcetera) are drying out each summer and not getting rewetted.

And this is after just 1 degree of warming, out of a forecast 3-and-a-bit for this century.

So while a lot of other fires will be further from where people live, we ought to expect fires on this scale and bigger as a yearly occurrence.

Re: California is on fire

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:11 am
by discovolante
California is on fire

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