Say a prayer for Mtn. Don

[MountainDon]

The winds in the area are predominantly from the south or southwest. For this fire that is good news for us. Over the past few days however, the winds have been confused, changing direction from time to time. At three AM today they were blowing from the north east bringing lots of smoke to the cabin. At that time I decided we would be wise to leave.

We packed up some personal sentimental items, our clothing, the contents of the fridge/freezer, all the stored gasoline and oil products, favorite tools, all the ammo and firearms. Moved the propane cylinders away from the cabin into a bare dirt clearing.

[MountainDon]

This is from our friend Chris who lives about 1.4 miles NNW of our cabin, closer to highway 4


Looking a little worse as the backside of Los Griegos got lit-up again by the winds and there are more hotspots burning withing my valley.  The west wind is strong today, last night it rotored to the East for a while which caused a lot of smoke in the valley, but the smoke is gone now.  The fire is mostly behind Los Griegos, 2 miles away, and as long as I can call out it hasn't nailed the Verizon Tower south on Sero Pelado.  There is a fire crew up on Los Griego now doing what they can, I saw a helicopter drop water out of a giant bucket, but most of the fire crews are over by Los Alamos.  My house isn't in a grove of pines, there's some a hundred feet away but Bootzins meadow is East of me a quarter mile so odds are I'll be Ok unless the winds start getting vicious out of the EAst.  So, wish me luck, it's raining down in Datyl, and Reserve, one can only hope those storms will drift up here.

[MountainDon]

I went up to the cabin Saturday evening by myself. K had some things to do. The first thing I new about the fire was Sunday about 2 in the afternoon. I was having a nap and slowly realized there were a lot of overflights by aircraft. It slowly dawned on me that the flights might be the forest service fire spotter. So I walked out the door, looked up and everything seemed fine; lots of blue sky. When I turned the corner and looked east I saw a huge plume of what appeared to be smoke. Sure enough it was. Here's some photos. These were taken something like a half hour, maybe 45 minutes, after the fire started. Some a little later.

The first picture is what I first saw looking east.


The second is the plume taken from the top of our road cut through the pumice hilltop.


The third is a slurry bomber.


The fourth the smoke plume as it was exploding rapidly in size.


Later I learned that one of the first responders fire fighters estimated that the fire jumped from about 150 acres to 1000 acres in less than 15 minutes. Maybe that's the plume I saw growing like it was shot out of a canon or a volcano?

I estimate the distance from my viewpoint to the ignition point of the fire to be about 2.7 miles. Scary to think of how things may have turned out if the ignition point was 2.7 miles in the other direction.

I have a little video to post after I'm finished with it.

[MountainDon]

2 min 41 second video of what I saw from about 2 PM and later that evening.




I would have narrated but this "jaws tied shut" thing makes it difficult to talk intelligibly.

[John Raabe]

Interesting video there Don!

The wind was really whipping things up there in the early afternoon.

Thanks for the update and I hope things settle down with a nice soft Washington state rain for a day or two.

[rick91351]

Mt Don I am so glad you and your property escaped this.  That of course is an under statement.  Did your road to the cabin become involved?  Until you find some higher humidity and moisture I am afraid you are in for a long, long summer.  Here where we occurred huge snows and spring rains that seemed to never end, now we have huge fuel supplies in the form of grasses.  They will be drying and become tinder before long.        

Until you have been through one it just is hard to describe.  We went through the largest fire in the nation in 1992 the 257,690 acre Foothills Fire.  54% was on Forest Service Lands.  BLM also took a hit as well.  If it had not been for a Forest Service timber cruiser neighbor who caught the wind just right in the morning and back fired along our road all of our properties would have burned.  That evening about the third or forth day of this fire's run it rushed in on the winds and jumped fire lines.  It hooked around our places mostly.  There were some spots here and there that were lost.  As is the case of the New Mexico fire there just was nothing you can do.

There was little structural loss because most of the area is not settled.  However the loss of game and livestock was tremendous.  Cattle were walking around blinded, some actually had hooves burned almost off.  Some their hides were blistered.  They were all put down as were deer and elk that were found suffering.  The Fish and Game at first threatened those who did or would, yet I never heard of a ticket actually being issued or an arrest being made.  Huge stands of Ponderosa Pine and Doug Fir were gone as was the largest Ponderosa Pine in the world.

Out in the areas that did not burn you could find pieces of charcoal black Ponderosa Pine bark.  Bark and embers were carried aloft and rained down ahead of the fire.  Thus seeding new fire if they were still hot when they landed.  These could be found several miles from where the fire had burned.

Great to have you back safe Don!

           

[MountainDon]

Mt Don I am so glad you and your property escaped this.  That of course is an under statement.  Did your road to the cabin become involved?  

No on the road. Our road goes NW from the property and then NNE to the highway with lots of turns, twists and elevation changes. Within a couple miles of the closest edge of fire as things are at present. We're going back up there Thursday to see what's happening.

Unofficially I've heard that a downed powerline or transformer blowout was the cause. The entire forest was locked down on Friday the 24th, there was no lightning and I was wondering how it started. Also read one report that said it started on private land; private landowners within the national forest do have access if they have asked for a key like we have. Special USFS locks with key blanks that are very tightly controlled.

[MountainDon]

Heading back up tomorrow AM for a week we hope. Depends on what the fires do. Our friend says the burns near us on Los Griegos are mostly out. There were several helo drops of water from a nearby pond.

Thanks to all for all the warm words and best wishes.

[MountainDon]

For anyone interested in map info on any wildfires around the country I came across a website I really like.

http://www.geomac.gov/index.shtml

Select the regular Viewer (not the classic viewer) . It uses sat. images that are quite good resolution. From what I've looked at much of their sat. image library is more up to date than Google earth. Our area has more cent imagery, for example, and I can pick out the cabin, shed, gazebo, the new road section.

[glenn kangiser]

Glad things are improving, Don.  Hope it stays that way.

[altaoaks]

I love and miss NM, I still have so much family in that vicinity.  Don, my prayers are with you and yours, and with everyone who is in the path of disaster.  I am especially praying Los Alamos Labs are spared.  The last thing we need is a nuclear disaster due to the massive fire.  We are all watching and praying, and keeping faith!

[ScottA]

Don you sure have a knack for getting in trouble. Look at the bright side, now you can shoot off fireworks without burning the forest down. Lets hope the wind stays in your favor. I've got my fingers crossed. With any luck we won't get much radioactive dust here in OK. Good luck!

[dug]

Glad everything is alright with the cabin Don. The humidity has been going up here and it looks like rain is on the way. Hope you are getting the same weather patterns there or at least I hope it's on the way.

[MountainDon]

Those of you with Google Earth on your computer may find this latest image of interest. It is the fire perimeter overlaid on the Google earth sat view.

[glenn kangiser]

That is pretty close, Don.  Feeling pretty safe now?

[MountainDon]

As long as nothing ignites to the west or south of us because west and south are where our prevailing winds come from. And as long as the winds don't do something stupid like blowing from the east for a long time. 

We have RAIN forcast for Sunday and maybe all next week. That would be great news. That almost 1/4 inch we got last week was the first significant moisture in something like 200 days. The weather station up there is showing much higher humidity compared to a week ago. 22 to 45% depending on time of day. Better than the single digits 2 weeks ago.


One very maddening thing is that somebody has cut the forest service lock at least five times in the past week we were up there. Probably some long time local resident who does not think the closure order includes him. Maybe the same person who smashed the old gate last winter. The new gate is quite substantial but for some reason the forest service is not using the enclosed pin lock system; they are using a chain and that exposes the lock to bolt cutters. I don't know what's with that. 

Anyhow, we'll be back up there tomorrow. until the next doctor appointment next Thursday.

[MountainDon]

The ten hour dead and down fuels moisture content is still abysmal. It was 3% at 3:08 this afternoon. Hard to believe anything can be that dry.

[glenn kangiser]

On the lock thing, we have had BLM locking people out of their own private property near here.  Some of them don't appreciate it.

Hope things stay well for you on the fire front.  Things can change quickly.

[MountainDon]

Last week there were flare ups to the south of us. It is still tinder dry, fuel loads with single digits and air humidity to match for the most part. Fuel load moisture as low as 3%, which is an improvement from 1%.     I think I mentioned that before; little change.

Whenever the winds blow the wrong way there are flare ups. From the maps it appears the fire jumped a quarter mile or so to the west in the area south of us.

Doesn't matter how close it gets to us as long as it stays over the ridge to the south, to the east, to the west....  The smoke can be bad though, but again we've been fairly lucky.

[RIjake]

I'd make a comment about global warming and the new normal and all, but that would just bring out the deniers.

Yea you're right, you probably shouldn't mention that.