Sucking on a chimney

[Tunnelcat]

Good God! For a whole week, we've had dense smoke courtesy of some really serious forest fires here in Oregon. In fact, the whole West Coast is blanketed in this stuff. It began with the horrific dry East winds that fired up Monday night, which of coarse started and spread multiple fires like crazy. Over 1 million acres have been burned by now just in our state, with whole mountain towns being wiped off the map. If the wind had kept up, these fires would've have spread to Portland and Salem. Fortunately, the wind died after roaring for a day and now unfortunately, we've been stuck in a thick pea soup of dense smoke and ash for a whole WEEK. I've also noticed that there's nothing like a bunch of forest fires and trapped smoke to get nearly 100% mask usage during the Covid Pandemic. I had to do a chore outside yesterday and I resorted to wearing my only N95 mask just to get the job done. No sense in getting the equivalent of a smoking pack of cigarettes just for breathing outside for 10 minutes. I can't even run my bathroom and kitchen fans, or the dryer because it will draw in the smoke. I just had my house painted too and now it's covered in ash and needs a wash. The roof is in the process of being replaced and isn't installed yet either because this smoke is delaying outside work and rain is forecast for next week. Even the inside of Home Depot has a visible pall of smoke. We desperately need a light West wind to kick up. Not enough to spur on the fires, but enough to clear out our gawd awful air and allow the workers to install my roof before the winter rains begin. I guess I should count my blessings that my house didn't burn down like all those unlucky people who's homes were in the path of these fires.



Downtown Corvallis this evening.

[vision]

I'm sorry you're going through this. My friend sent me pics the the sky outside her house in San Francisco and it looks crazy. It's not as bad down here in Southern California, but you can still smell the smoke and the sun is a nice color of red half the day. My throat and eyes have been itchy from the fires and they are miles and miles away. I feel bad for all people in more rural areas. It's times like these I'm happy to be surrounded by asphalt and concrete.

[CDN_Merlin]

Wow. That's nasty. Stay safe

[Krom]

Remember the massive fires in Australia early this year? This is the same thing happening here, and it will probably start up again in Australia towards early next year. It is a vicious cycle that isn't going away any time soon. Make sure you have an escape plan, keep a cache of supplies handy that you can grab and load into your vehicle in a hurry if you need to evacuate. Maybe even just keep some clothes/non-perishable food items and water in the vehicle permanently so the only thing you need to grab is medications and medical supplies.

An aunt and uncle of mine moved to Oregon last year, last week the town they moved to largely burned to the ground. Their house was spared but the main street of the town and most of the businesses/grocery stores/etc are pretty much gone.

[Tunnelcat]

I'm sorry for you aunt and uncle, but at least their home survived. What town did they move to? Detroit, Otis, Mill City or Phoenix? Most of the towns that have burned down in Oregon were mountain towns that were situated in deep forested valleys where the fire was funneled through at high speed by those sudden east winds. I'm currently not in a fire area, but everything around us is so dry that it wouldn't take much to light things off in suburbia, especially if the wind took off again. Our biggest problem in the valley is the smoke, which is still at extremely hazardous levels and has been for a full week now. Now it's combining with fog in the mornings and it's suffocating. We need a light ocean breeze to blow this stuff out of here, but not a strong storm which would make firefighting nearly impossible. I'd like to get my roof installed before the rains come too, but working in this stuff is nasty and I'm sure the roofers are trying to avoid it right now. At lot of outside work is now backlogged. A warning for everyone to the east of us. Once the winds change, all this smoke is headed your way.

[Flatlander]

Crazy weather! I hope you stay safe and get your roof finished ASAP. Maybe you could have one of our storms to help put out the fires - we have five of 'em brewing and churning over here in the Atlantic and Gulf right now https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

[Vander]

We've been stuck in the smoke for almost a month now, since the remnants of a tropical storm brought a crazy lightning storm through, setting the bay area on fire. I think we're on the 28th straight day of unhealthy air quality.

This pic is from the lightning storm that started it for us:

[Tunnelcat]

You still stuck in the smoke Vander? I'd hate to suffer a whole month of this stuff, let alone the 2 weeks so far. I've got laundry piling up because I don't want to run the dryer and suck all this smoke into the house and a fence that needs sealing before the weather closes in for the winter. Even an N95 mask ain't cutting it for long term outside work.

[Vander]

It's actually started to clear in the last couple days, but yeah, we've been mostly inundated with smoke since mid August. The lightning storm touched large fires north, south, east, and west of where I am. (Los Gatos) As it stands, they've burned about a million acres surrounding the bay area. The only temporary breaks occurred when the air currents changed, and there would be a delay before we got smoke from a different fire. Add in the fires in Oregon, Northern California, Central Valley, and the Sierras that we've also been receiving smoke from and the month has been pretty miserable.