Fire "Season"

[SBitz]

We were glad the fire next to 101 at Fairview was out quickly last night, but wondered about the lingering smoke. As many have noted, our fire season has now stretched to include the whole year and Summer brings more days when nearly the entire continent is affected by wildfires. After noting the dark red sunset with a friend last night I did a quick scan of resources and have started this topic to share some info on all this. Here's what the continental smoke map looked like at sunset, with all of California under heavy to extreme smoke (red dots are satellite fire detections, and I've pumped the color up to better show them).

[SBitz]

It was no surprise to see several TV news items about the fires last night, and this one on PBS Newshour went into more depth than most. I couldn't get the video to "embed" here, so rather than click on the image to play it just click on the link below the image.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HvnOuQYyJo

[SBitz]

Overnight the smoke map only shows satellite fire detections since it's much more difficult to get good mapping data in the dark. In the last hour, today's first smoke map was posted and it still shows moderately heavy smoke over nearly all of Canada and most of six Western states. As the day warms, hopefully that won't grow. But it probably will. :(

To see the current smoke map click here.