quote:

More than 500,000 people in Oregon have been forced to evacuate because of wildfires – over 10% of the state's population – as the blazes continued to race through more than a dozen Western states Friday.

At least 17 people have died and hundreds of homes have been destroyed by more than 100 major fires that have consumed an area nearly the size of New Jersey. At least 12 deaths have been reported in California, four in Oregon and one in Washington state.

Nearly 28,000 firefighters and support personnel are assigned to wildfires across the West, and evacuation orders are in place for residents near 42 large fires, the National Interagency Fire Center said Friday. Wind-driven fires were also burning in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

https://www.usatoday.com/story...a-deaths/3467271001/

We have a LOT of smoke in the air here in the Seattle area, even though (as I understand) all of the fires are east of the Cascades.

AQI is 197. That's dangerous.

I-1 has not said a word about west coast fires in weeks.

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:
I-1 has not said a word about west coast fires in weeks.

He probably doesn’t want people to panic…

Remember how much he hates the area affected - so much he's targeted the overall demographic with serious financial penalties.

Wouldn't be surprised if he and his acolytes think the West Coast has somehow deserved this calamity. Hand of G-d, etc.

If he says anything lacking in care or grace, it would really come back to bite him. Perhaps he's finally listening to his advisers when they tell him better to say nothing sometimes.

I haven't looked seriously at a map, but my rough guess is that the people affected by fires may skew toward red voters. Many of these fires seem away from bluer urban areas (like Napa Valley) this time. But they're in blue states, so perhaps these are red voters Trump doesn't much care about.

Presidents are supposed to care about all of us, but that's asking way too much of pea brain.

My daughter is in Salem, Oregon. The AQI there was 550 this week, which is classified as hazardous.

I read somewhere that it was 700 in the SF Bay area.

I have been corrected. All of the smoke in the Seattle area is from farther south on the coast. It’s blowing north, then west into a cyclonic west of North America.

I am east of the mountains this afternoon. AQI is 58. No smoke. No smell. There is a fire less than 100 miles southeast of here.

Visibility between Seattle and the mountains was down to a mile or so in places.

Sheesh.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:

quote:

More than 500,000 people in Oregon have been forced to evacuate because of wildfires – over 10% of the state's population – as the blazes continued to race through more than a dozen Western states Friday.

At least 17 people have died and hundreds of homes have been destroyed by more than 100 major fires that have consumed an area nearly the size of New Jersey. At least 12 deaths have been reported in California, four in Oregon and one in Washington state.

Nearly 28,000 firefighters and support personnel are assigned to wildfires across the West, and evacuation orders are in place for residents near 42 large fires, the National Interagency Fire Center said Friday. Wind-driven fires were also burning in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

https://www.usatoday.com/story...a-deaths/3467271001/

There’s a correction on that number: “More than 40,000 Oregonians have been evacuated," Brown said during a news conference. "And approximately 500,000 Oregonians are currently in evacuation zones – that means 500,000 people are either at a Level 1, 2 or 3 evacuation alert.”

Even so, it’s impacting a lot of people.

It’s really smoky here in PDX, the Air Quality Index was at least 366, hazardous, overnight. (I keep checking, obsessively.) The sky is a yellowish gray. And I can smell smoke inside my house, even in the basement.

Hoping for the forecasted rain on Monday afternoon.

This morning I saw photos of what Portland looked like yesterday. Yikes.

How is everyone doing today?

I have a nephew who lives in Portland. Ugh.

Jf

Air is getting worse. AQI was in the 300s, but tonight it’s 493 (looks like the scale goes to 500). Blech. Staying indoors.

Rain can’t come soon enough. Monday, we hope!

I went over to Cle Elum (just on the other side of the mountains) Friday afternoon. It was clear and non-smoky all afternoon and stars were out at night. I woke up Saturday morning and it smelled vaguely smoky. By the time I left at 11:30 Saturday morning, visibility in town was down to about a mile and it smelled terrible.

Mrs pj said the smoke smell was coming into the house. I stopped at a hardware store and bought some furnace filters. While I was there perusing the selection, another guy came by and asked the employee if they had any air purifiers. She said "no". I held up the filter and said "I'm making my own".

When I got home, I gathered up some box fans and taped the filters on. A 4" MERV-8 (not quite HEPA), and a regular cheap filter upstream to keep the big filter from just collecting dust.





They seem to be working. It doesn't smell smoky in the house.

It was very hazy this morning, but some of that may have been our classic marine layer mixed with smoke. At least the smoke is blocking some sun, so it's not so hot in the house. AQI right now is 237.

We don't have any rain forecast until Thursday or Friday.


I still haven't heard I-1 say anything about the fires. I am guessing that like the early days of the pandemic, Jared or Stephen Miller or both are saying not to bother because they are only hitting the blue states that don't vote red.

Ingenious, pj!

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:

I still haven't heard I-1 say anything about the fires. I am guessing that like the early days of the pandemic, Jared or Stephen Miller or both are saying not to bother because they are only hitting the blue states that don't vote red.

He told folks at his rally Thursday night that the forest fires are a result of poor forest management.

Get your broom out and sweep the forest floor.