Front Fire

[SBitz]

We flew along the coast today, and caught this view of Morro Rock looking a bit like a volcano in the approaching sunset colored even redder by smoke offshore.

Somewhere past SLO we got this view of one of the smoke sources: the Front Fire somewhere North of Twitchell Reservoir.

Even though the wind was apparently fairly brisk at the ridgeline elevation by the fire, the plume was white which generally seems to indicate the fire wasn't very large or hot at that point (about 7pm). We've seen enough large fires from the air to know that they pound up through even quite strong wind to tower like thunderclouds up into the stratosphere, and they always have dark reddish-brown smoke filled with ash. Since there's a darker streak downwind (to the right), I presume there had just been some water or retardant drops on or very near the active fire. This too seems a good sign to me, since they typically drop retardant ahead of large fires and if effective that seems to slow their progression more than produce a sudden shift from dark to white smoke.

Then passing KSMX (Santa Maria Airport) on the instruments we saw a plane about to pass well under us, and got this zoom pic of a fire bomber climbing directly toward the fire a minute later.

Hope they were able to knock it down a lot while it was still light enough to fly, that the cooler air of night calmed it down further, and that the overworked ground crews can establish some containment overnight.

[SBitz]

Here's the latest "shortwave" InfraRed satellite image of the region, and where the Front Fire had been a bright white spot at about 4pm it's now indistinguishable.  Maybe they managed to knock down the major fire area with air drops before sunset and crews are now working on containment lines and smaller hot spots.

The whole Central Valley is thick with smoke from the various fires, and you may not realize that most of the continent is in heavy smoke from all the fires. This smoke map shows just how vast the affected area is. The red dots are infrared satellite fire detections of course, and the various thicknesses of smoke can be seen thinning as they spread farther from the active fires and get diluted by wind. I can tell you from past experiences flying near and in these areas depicted as having any smoke, they're pretty thick. Often we've flown in areas not depicted as affected, and wished we were elsewhere. Visibility is affected of course, but often there's also a distinct smoke smell. Sometimes when the plumes are tall, to avoid the smoke we have to go around it because it goes from ground level far to miles up.

Down here on the ground, the Air Quality Index is mostly Moderate (Yellow) for CA except near the fires. Especially since winds are forecast to be light and generally from the coast (which is another boon for Front Fire containment efforts).