if you’re headed to Idaho or Montana in September- start your prayers now

S.Clancy

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Jan 28, 2015
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Montana
I read a study where a panel of fire researchers basically said that either state and fed agencies increase prescribed fire by like 50x or it will be a decade or 2 before we burn through the fuels caused by suppression and halting logging. So get ready for more smoke
 
Joined
Aug 9, 2017
Messages
976
Location
Montana
I watched the FS chopper fly by yesterday with the water bucket. Smoke so thick sometimes we can’t see the mountain that is only 3 miles from the house. It’s going to be like this until it snows
 

mtnkid85

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Joined
Jul 31, 2012
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Location
Beartooth Mtns, MT
**** praying. Make your voice heard, lets make some actual change. We need active forest management, in the short term fast track all these thinning projects that are constantly getting tied up in legal red tape and longterm lets make meaningful progress towards reducing are total carbon footprints.
 

jmav58

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Joined
Feb 12, 2015
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MT
Meagher/Park county (where three good size fires are) have been put in a flash flood watch for Monday night.


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mtwarden

mtwarden

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Oct 18, 2016
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I see the Boulder fire in the Flathead took out several homes :(

We're showing a 50% chance for rain tomorrow, we'll see- call me skeptical when it's 95 and I can barely see across the street
 

Broomd

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Joined
Sep 29, 2014
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North Idaho
Got a phone call last night about 1:45 am, a neighbor had come up our gravel road and saw that there was a power poll flaming and raining sparks on the whole area. She was hysterical. Talk about instant feelings of desperation!
I grabbed a water tank threw it on my atv and quickly filled it, got over there and couldn't believe that the sparks weren't igniting the tall grass and brush to doom our entire valley.
The very light and rare rain we had received the 90 minutes prior was just enough to keep all of us from losing everything we owned; this area has been a tinder box for a month.
The power guys arrived by about 3am and replaced the cross bar on the burnt poll, those same fellas told me that the sparse rain and dust combines to actually ignite the insulators on the poles.

A small 30-50 gallon spray tank can literally be a life and/or property saver if you live in the West. Mandatory equipment.
 

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rclouse79

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Joined
Dec 10, 2019
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Got a big storm in Boise last night. I got a call from my brother last night at 10:45 that his house was flooding. Dealing with that was not fun, but it sure was nice to have all of the smoke knocked out of the air for a day.
 

Spike elk

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Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
310
Got a phone call last night about 1:45 am, a neighbor had come up our gravel road and saw that there was a power poll flaming and raining sparks on the whole area. She was hysterical. Talk about instant feelings of desperation!
I grabbed a water tank threw it on my atv and quickly filled it, got over there and couldn't believe that the sparks weren't igniting the tall grass and brush to doom our entire valley.
The very light and rare rain we had received the 90 minutes prior was just enough to keep all of us from losing everything we owned; this area has been a tinder box for a month.
The power guys arrived by about 3am and replaced the cross bar on the burnt poll, those same fellas told me that the sparse rain and dust combines to actually ignite the insulators on the poles.

A small 30-50 gallon spray tank can literally be a life and/or property saver if you live in the West. Mandatory equipment.
Sure dodged a bullet there and good on you for being prepared. For the time being the tables have turned for much of Idaho. There are flood warnings carrying through tomorrow from the recent and forecasted rains.
 

Broomd

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Joined
Sep 29, 2014
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North Idaho
Sure dodged a bullet there and good on you for being prepared. For the time being the tables have turned for much of Idaho. There are flood warnings carrying through tomorrow from the recent and forecasted rains.
We sure did!
Don't think that we in North Idaho are getting those flood warnings, or any real rain forecast, but wow, talk about shtf everywhere, feast or famine.
 
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mtwarden

mtwarden

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Oct 18, 2016
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Montana
^ that tells the story pretty well; no precipitation and two months of well above average temperatures = bad fire season
 

sneaky

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Joined
Feb 1, 2014
Messages
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ID
Rained three days in a row here at my place. Mud and rock slides have been the biggest issue to deal with this weekend. Loving that it cooled down, just throwing a wrench in my plans to work up a batch of waxed sand for my trapline this winter. I'll take the rain over that anyways.

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mtwarden

mtwarden

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we're a day or two from surpassing a half million acres burned in Montana, not sure where Idaho is

some areas received much needed rain, but only provided a slight easing in fire behavior- it would have to rain heavily several days in a row to end this and in my 50 years of living here, I've never seen that in August

with it only being a couple of days into August and no end in sight to dry and hot conditions, it's not unconceivable that we could see full closures like we did in 88

hopefully an early snow in September ends this carnage
 

Baddog

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Joined
Feb 26, 2020
Messages
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we're a day or two from surpassing a half million acres burned in Montana, not sure where Idaho is

some areas received much needed rain, but only provided a slight easing in fire behavior- it would have to rain heavily several days in a row to end this and in my 50 years of living here, I've never seen that in August

with it only being a couple of days into August and no end in sight to dry and hot conditions, it's not unconceivable that we could see full closures like we did in 88

hopefully an early snow in September ends this carnage
Shoot we got one fire over 400k in Oregon. Half million ain’t no big deal in the grand scheme of it all
 
Joined
Oct 23, 2017
Messages
454
Location
Idaho
Rained three days in a row here at my place. Mud and rock slides have been the biggest issue to deal with this weekend. Loving that it cooled down, just throwing a wrench in my plans to work up a batch of waxed sand for my trapline this winter. I'll take the rain over that anyways.

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Have 0.74" on the rain gauge for this month so far. Amazing how fast the breaks went from brown to green again!
 

mwebs

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Joined
Sep 2, 2018
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387
Location
ID
From what I gather north Idaho is the issue. We have tons of smoke rolling in now after a good amount of rain in eastern ID.
 

CorbLand

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Mar 16, 2016
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We got a couple good storms over the weekend. I got stuck in one checking cameras. I was drenched by the time I got back to the pickup.
 
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