Wildfire Season

[Joey D]

Ok so it's not really a season anymore, but rather a year-round thing.

We have two major ones burning in Utah right now, the Bennion Creek fire is already up to 1,300 acres and started last Friday. They're having a really tough time putting it out too since it's only really accessible by air at the moment and the National Guard is using Blackhawks to dump water on it. We also have the East Canyon incident that's up to 1,600 acres and started yesterday. That one is threatening homes and ranches since it's in a somewhat populated area. The Bear fire sprung up yesterday afternoon as well and is currently at 1,900 acres in a rural, but populated, area.

With Utah now in extreme drought conditions I fear that this is going to become the norm this summer in a bad way. The Fourth ought to be a friggin disaster.

I know Arizona has two massive ones burning right now outside of Tuscon. The Telegraph fire is up to 81,000 acres and the Mescal is up to 74,000 acres.

New Mexico has the Johnson Fire which is up to 45,000 acres and Nevada is currently fighting the Cherrywood fire that's torched 26,000 acres.

 

[Keef]

*Looks out his Ohio window*

I'm not sure I could start a bonfire if I tried. Literally, my friends and I have already gone through a gallon of lighter fluid just this spring. We've done everything from scraping kindling off of bought fire wood, magnesium dust, dryer lint. Nothing burns. The moment it hits the air it's just like nah, carbon, oxygen, none of those things matter in the ocean. We're literally using a leaf blower to keep the fire alive because wood doesn't work.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Marin County (where I live, just north of SF) is currently facing the worst drought conditions it's experienced in more than 140 years. Reservoirs didn't even hit 50% capacity during the rainy season (typically they are around 90% after winter). There's talk about an emergency pipeline or emergency desalination plants. It's not realistic to expect any rain until December. Everything is bone dry. I'm dreading the late summer. The fires last year were psychologically heavy.

It's not good. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article251954358.html

 

[Danoff]

I don't have any answers, but we need to get better at dealing with forest fires fast. We absolutely suck at preventing and fighting forest fires. Drones offer some potential. Fire surveillance drones and semi-automated suppression systems could be outstanding, and for a fraction of the insane costs incurred by these things.

 

[Liquid]

Don't forest fires frequently occur when forests are cleared too much, interfering with the natural ecology cycle?

 

[Danoff]

Don't forest fires frequently occur when forests are cleared too much, interfering with the natural ecology cycle?

I've only heard the opposite. The forest fires naturally occur especially in areas where forests are insufficiently maintained. I think a big part of preventing forest fires is raking duff. Forests don't naturally grow in a way that prevents fire, fires are part of the natural cycle of the forest ecosystem. But they're also a huge problem, and they're more of a problem in drought conditions.

If we could control fires a little better, we could manage our forests a lot more effectively. Everyone's willing to spend 100x the amount of money to fight a fire compared to how much they're willing to prevent one.

$2.1 billion of California's $2.5 billion forest budget is spent on fighting fires.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I don't have any answers, but we need to get better at dealing with forest fires fast. We absolutely suck at preventing and fighting forest fires. Drones offer some potential. Fire surveillance drones and semi-automated suppression systems could be outstanding, and for a fraction of the insane costs incurred by these things.

I've thought about a drone system combined with live, high resolution thermal satellite imagery, with particular focus on areas experiencing high wind, electrical storms, or other elevated risks. Satellite uses machine learning to detect a possible fire and then deploys the nearest drone (stationed at regular intervals throughout the state) to confirm. Once confirmed, a fleet of fire suppression drones arrive quickly to control the fire before it spreads too much. Maybe the last part is optimistic, but just getting to and confirming a fire quickly would be a huge benefit.

 

[Keef]

Marin County (where I live, just north of SF) is currently facing the worst drought conditions it's experienced in more than 140 years. Reservoirs didn't even hit 50% capacity during the rainy season (typically they are around 90% after winter). There's talk about an emergency pipeline or emergency desalination plants. It's not realistic to expect any rain until December. Everything is bone dry. I'm dreading the late summer. The fires last year were psychologically heavy.

It's not good. https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article251954358.html

I know desalinization plants are expensive to operate but I have to imagine that water shortages and the ecological cost of pumping that stuff a thousand or more miles from the Colorado River isn't cheap either. There's literally an entire ocean bordering the entire length of the state. Ending the reliance on ground and river water would immediately solve the river problem and steadily solve the ground water problem.

Everybody thought working from home was not feasible but found out otherwise. I can't imagine discovering that actually having water would be found any differently.

As for the immediate fire problem, I'm not really sure what to do about that but I feel like training and education might be a good start. I often hear about people making silly mistakes such as smoking cigarettes in the forest. I watch a lot of overlanding and camping videos and there is often talk about respecting fire bans and treading lightly, etc. It seems to me like a lot of these fires are started by careless people. I know mistakes happen but how much further do park services have to go to prevent people from doing flammable things? As for lightning, would it be feasible to construct a bunch of lighting towers in the forest to ground the strikes? It works in cities, could it work in forests?

The West needs to get more responsible with their water and they need to do it quickly. East of the Mississippi we have a hard time grasping what could be going wrong out there. I don't understand what it means to not have water when I want it, and yet despite all the problems people keep flocking to live out west. My instinct is to simply label everybody irresponsible, because the environment out there is so delicate that one more person really does make it worse. There's too many people with too many demands and they're destroying the land at a record pace.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I know Arizona has two massive ones burning right now outside of Tuscon.

They're actually closer to Phoenix. The main highway heading east out of town is closed (last I checked) so anyone going east has to go north first, then another road south to get around it.

If this continues, we won't have any forest left in the state in ~5 years.

 

[Blitz24]

They're actually closer to Phoenix. The main highway heading east out of town is closed (last I checked) so anyone going east has to go north first, then another road south to get around it.

View attachment 1016490

If this continues, we won't have any forest left in the state in ~5 years.

Isn't there a forest further north on I-17 towards Sedona or is that gone now?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I know desalinization plants are expensive to operate but I have to imagine that water shortages and the ecological cost of pumping that stuff a thousand or more miles from the Colorado River isn't cheap either. There's literally an entire ocean bordering the entire length of the state. Ending the reliance on ground and river water would immediately solve the river problem and steadily solve the ground water problem.

Everybody thought working from home was not feasible but found out otherwise. I can't imagine discovering that actually having water would be found any differently.

As for the immediate fire problem, I'm not really sure what to do about that but I feel like training and education might be a good start. I often hear about people making silly mistakes such as smoking cigarettes in the forest. I watch a lot of overlanding and camping videos and there is often talk about respecting fire bans and treading lightly, etc. It seems to me like a lot of these fires are started by careless people. I know mistakes happen but how much further do park services have to go to prevent people from doing flammable things? As for lightning, would it be feasible to construct a bunch of lighting towers in the forest to ground the strikes? It works in cities, could it work in forests?

The West needs to get more responsible with their water and they need to do it quickly. East of the Mississippi we have a hard time grasping what could be going wrong out there. I don't understand what it means to not have water when I want it, and yet despite all the problems people keep flocking to live out west. My instinct is to simply label everybody irresponsible, because the environment out there is so delicate that one more person really does make it worse. There's too many people with too many demands and they're destroying the land at a record pace.

I think lighting towers work when you are trying to protect something discrete. When you are trying to protect....everything...I'm not sure how feasible that would be.

Well that's easy, east of the Mississippi doesn't have water issues. Those are some mighty fine lakes you got out there. Despite the growth of the region, less than half as many Americans actually live on the west coast as they do on the East coast. I'd bet that people out here are more water conscious than other parts of the country and it permeates a significant amount of the way of life out here - drought resistant landscaping (lawns are becoming increasingly taboo), rainwater harvesting, water conservation, low flow plumbing fixtures as mandated by code, etc. "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down".

Ultimately, it's the agriculture of California (in particular) that is the heaviest user of water. This state produces a lot of food. California produces 2/3's of the nations fruits and nuts. 2/3s!

At the end of the day, we have limited rainfall in CA and a lot of competing interests for the water. If you build more dams, you have to deal with the ecological fallout of that. If you limit agriculture, you have to deal with the economic fallout of that.

Desalination may be a requirement in the future, but it consumes gobs of energy.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Isn't there a forest further north on I-17 towards Sedona or is that gone now?

There are quite a few burn patches up north too.

 

[Keef]

Ultimately, it's the agriculture of California (in particular) that is the heaviest user of water. This state produces a lot of food. California produces 2/3's of the nations fruits and nuts. 2/3s!

At the end of the day, we have limited rainfall in CA and a lot of competing interests for the water. If you build more dams, you have to deal with the ecological fallout of that. If you limit agriculture, you have to deal with the economic fallout of that.

Desalination may be a requirement in the future, but it consumes gobs of energy.

Well fortunately the libruls want to create gobs of energy by using nuclear power to bolster our renewable-energy future. There are a lot of rich people in CA so let's get it crackin let's make it happen. I see movie stars buying big houses but I don't see them funding a privately owned and operated nuclear reactor. I'm not seeing much progress being made. If agriculture is literally what's making your state sink then let's feed it with desalinated water.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Well fortunately the libruls want to create gobs of energy by using nuclear power to bolster our renewable-energy future. There are a lot of rich people in CA so let's get it crackin let's make it happen. I see movie stars buying big houses but I don't see them funding a privately owned and operated nuclear reactor. I'm not seeing much progress being made. If agriculture is literally what's making your state sink then let's feed it with desalinated water.

I wish. Instead we're getting offshore windfarms. Yeah, I'm sure those will be a cinch to maintain....

Repeat after me...WE WANT NUKES, WE WANT NUKES!

 

[Danoff]

Repeat after me...WE WANT NUKES, WE WANT NUKES!

Don't look now, but:

The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.

Solar is the cheap energy for California. Cheaper even than this graphic makes it look:

Solar has the side benefit of reducing evaporation for rivers:

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I'm all for solar. Solar all the rooftops in the west. Put solar thermal on every hotel and apartment building to produce hot water. We could probably come close to eliminating all natural gas consumption for water heating with solar thermal. And we would have a far more resilient, decentralized power grid and less fire risk to boot! Solar thermal power stations are awesome too. Next time you're in Vegas () drive out to the Ivanpah Solar Thermal plant. It's awe-inspiring even from miles away. Hell you can clearly see it from 30,000ft on an airplane. I wonder if you could drive big condensation machines with solar energy, extracting water right out of the atmosphere.

I'm less jazzed about solar PV, but it does have it's place. I feel like the reason nuclear energy has become expensive is because of disinvestment...the technology has not developed beyond 1970s levels for the most part. It's a shame. The power potential of nuclear is vast and it's clean and it takes a tiny footprint. Yeah the waste is nasty, but the scale of the problem isn't that big. You could probably just dump all nuclear power plant waste into the ocean and it wouldn't *really* be a problem, it's not like it spreads like oil. Water is extremely effective at stopping gamma radiation. Yeah you might get some mutant crabs or something, but it's a lot better than atmospheric nuclear tests spreading fallout all over the world that we did for years and years and years....

 

[Danoff]

I'm all for solar. Solar all the rooftops in the west. Put solar thermal on every hotel and apartment building to produce hot water. We could probably come close to eliminating all natural gas consumption for water heating with solar thermal. Solar thermal power stations are awesome too. Next time you're in Vegas () drive out to the Ivanpah Solar Thermal plant. It's awe-inspiring even from miles away. Hell you can clearly see it from 30,000ft on an airplane. I wonder if you could drive big condensation machines with solar energy, extracting water right out of the atmosphere.

I'm less jazzed about solar PV, but it does have it's place. I feel like the reason nuclear energy has become expensive is because of disinvestment...the technology has not developed beyond 1970s levels for the most part. It's a shame. The power potential of nuclear is vast and it's clean and it takes a tiny footprint. Yeah the waste is nasty, but the scale of the problem isn't that big. You could probably just dump all nuclear power plant waste into the ocean and it wouldn't *really* be a problem, it's not like it spreads like oil. Water is extremely effective at stopping gamma radiation. Yeah you might get some mutant crabs or something, but it's a lot better than atmospheric nuclear tests spreading fallout all over the world that we did for years and years and years....

Solar thermal looks like it's a higher cost per mwh than PV. I'm with you on nuclear waste not being a huge issue. Also I have seen the solar thermal plant outside of vegas, it's very cool.

 

[wfooshee]

Don't forest fires frequently occur when forests are cleared too much, interfering with the natural ecology cycle?

California especially, but other western states as well, have been through an environmentally over-sensitive period for decades, now, where nothing can be done to wild areas because some turtle or some worm might be harmed. They do almost no prescribed burning, which thins out the underbrush and removes the easy fuel for wildfires.

That said, prescribed burns can get out of hand almost instantly and become wildfires when the area is in drought, and when the wind picks up. There is also the factor of accessibility.

We have a lot of prescribed burns here in Florida during the winter and early spring. There are people always complaining about it, "Oh, the poor squirrels and raccoons and bunnies, what are they gonna do?" Well, they're gonna run, and when the fire's over, they're going to go back. The woods are still there, unlike when a wildfire actually wipes the forest out. But going back to accessibility, of course Florida is flat. Its highest point is just over 300 feet above sea level! State-managed forest areas have fire roads cut through them every so often, which is really easy to do here... you unload equipment on the side of the highway, point it at the tress and go. The land is considerably lumpier out west, making forest management much more difficult. OTOH, they do have that "We can't hurt the widdle critters" mentality out there.

Prescribed burning works. You thin out the underbrush, which is the easy fuel for larger fires. It takes a long time and a lot of heat for a mature tree to actually catch fire. Grass, shrubbery, small trees, not so much. There is also the fact not discovered until the forest came close to complete depletion in some places out west that some trees need fire; their cones don't open and spread seeds unless they've been burned a bit. That's been quite a while back, but as slow as forest growth is, the "NO FIRES EVER" policy stood very firm for way too long before someone figured out why the trees were thinning.

 

[Joey D]

California especially, but other western states as well, have been through an environmentally over-sensitive period for decades, now, where nothing can be done to wild areas because some turtle or some worm might be harmed.

This isn't true about Utah at all and we do prescribe burns all the time. The biggest issue is drought and weather in the western states. You can clear brush all you want but if it's 2% humidity, with a stiff wind, and virtual no rain for months on end, it's going to create a situation where a fire is almost a guarantee.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

This isn't true about Utah at all and we do prescribe burns all the time. The biggest issue is drought and weather in the western states. You can clear brush all you want but if it's 2% humidity, with a stiff wind, and virtual no rain for months on end, it's going to create a situation where a fire is almost a guarantee.

They do prescribed burns in CA all the time too...

Controlled Burns Scheduled for Novato
Seasonal firefighter trainings and fuel reduction effort to start May 26

 

[wfooshee]

Drought and accessibility remain serious issues, though, both in prevention and firefighting.

 

[Keef]

I wish. Instead we're getting offshore windfarms. Yeah, I'm sure those will be a cinch to maintain....

Repeat after me...WE WANT NUKES, WE WANT NUKES!

I actually don't want nukes lol. The potential fallout, no pun intended, is extreme. In my opinion, influenced by my professional, an extremely small risk with an extremely high cost is precisely the type of risk that needs to be mitigated.

As for offshore farms, they've been used for decades in Europe to great effect. They're currently planning a bunch along the east coast - a few friends of mine from my last employer are the ones who surveyed the entire length of the Atlantic coast for the environmental studies. They're also planning some off the coast of Cleveland in Lake Erie.

And solar, if done correctly, actually would use zero new real estate. That sounds idiotic at first but the more time you spend flying low over cities like Chicago the more you realize that there are dozens of square miles of unused warehouse roof space which already exists in these cities and is doing nothing but reflecting heat back into the atmosphere. It appears that Chicago has subsidies or mandates for new warehouses to have solar roofs - Walmarts and the like often do - but industrial warehouses definitely do not. Look at this one small industrial area:

Not a single solar panel in sight. It's embarrassing. Imagine how much power a city could generate without needing any new real estate for solar farms.

That said, CA's situation might be unique. They're starving for water and need a tremendous amount of it and that requires a tremendous amount of power. Urban solar roofs might never be enough but they would certainly ease the load on tradition power plants, allowing a lot of that power to be diverted toward desalinization plants. Plus, when power usage is low the desalinization plants could be ramped up and pump their water into the various reservoirs that already exist, keeping them full.

Solar has the side benefit of reducing evaporation for rivers:

And doesn't LA and other cities in California have a ton of massive concrete drainage channels that just sit there and do nothing for most of the year? That's also free real estate to cover with solar panels just like that image. And obviously the canals bringing fresh water to the cities but the goal of desalinization imo would be to eliminate the need for that.

 

[Danoff]

That said, CA's situation might be unique. They're starving for water and need a tremendous amount of it and that requires a tremendous amount of power. Urban solar roofs might never be enough but they would certainly ease the load on tradition power plants, allowing a lot of that power to be diverted toward desalinization plants.

Even utilities are moving solar, and california is a great place to do it. If you're going to build a giant power plant in california, solar is way up on there on the list of best choices.

 

[Dotini]

The western US is entering a megadrought. Wildfires are only a small part of the overall problem.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Lower Arizona deserts hitting 118*F the next few days. Fires hazing the skies. Not great but its making the sun a bit less intense. There was ash on my car when I left for work this morning.

 

[Joey D]

Fires continue to burn in Utah with two more springing up today. Our two biggest fires though are threatening homes and causing evacuations though. It's scary to see this happening since in the five years I've been here I haven't seen it this bad this early before. It certainly doesn't bode well for the rest of summer and autumn.

 

[Dotini]

Fires continue to burn in Utah with two more springing up today. Our two biggest fires though are threatening homes and causing evacuations though. It's scary to see this happening since in the five years I've been here I haven't seen it this bad this early before. It certainly doesn't bode well for the rest of summer and autumn.

What about for the next decade or century? Is this a once in a 1000 year megadrought?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I'm now smelling wildfire smoke from Arizona and Utah...in San Francisco. Must be some big ones out there.

 

[Joey D]

I'm now smelling wildfire smoke from Arizona and Utah...in San Francisco. Must be some big ones out there.

Yup:

Pack Creek is at 8,500 acres with 30% containment
Bear is at 11,649 acres with 30% containment
Bennion Creek is at 8,400 acres with 10% containment

There are several smaller ones (under 1,000 acres) still burning too.

It's only going to get worse as well since our governor is continuing to live up to his name and said the state can't ban fireworks:



Never mind the state made the fireworks legal in the first place. Sounds like the opinion came from the AG who's both a diehard Trumper and Qcumber, so apparently fireworks are going to undermind Trump or something? I have no idea.

 

[Joey D]

In 2021, there have been 29,947 wildfires in the US that have burned 1,338,125 acres. The country is currently at Preparedness Level 4 out of a possible 5.

Looks like the biggest fires right now are down in Arizona and to date have burned up 352,529 acres:

• Telegraph Incident: 180,755 acres, human-caused
• Backbone Incident: 40,855 acres, lightning-caused

New Mexico has one really big fire going right now:

• Johnson Incident: 88,420 acres, lightning-caused

Utah is in third with several active wildfires account for 44,020 acres

• Flatt Incident: 14,082 acres, lightning-caused
• Bear Creek Incident: 12,174, lightning-caused

Weirdly, while California has a ton of fires burning right now, there's nothing that major currently going on.