Hi Fire Buddies,
I hope that all of you are enjoying the start of summer vacation and have had a chance to sleep in just goof off. It has been very quite in Glacier Creek for the last month and I even took some time off to go on vacation.
Today I want to talk to all of you about the Wallow Fire in Arizona. The fire started 9 days ago and fire officals think it was a campfire that was not put out correctly, but they are still investagating. The fire has burned over 185,000 acres, so this is a very large fire. There is a Type 1 team overseeing this fire and there are over 2,100 firefighters along with 12 bulldozers, 138 fire trucks, 31 water tenders and 20 helicopters now working this fire. They are finally getting control of this fire, which means they have established fire lines and are working on hot spots.
While this huge fire is being worked on there is another fire in Arizona called the Horseshoe Two Fire which has burned over 100,000 acres so far. They also have massive resources on the ground and in the air and hope to have this fire contained in the next few days.
There are fires also burning in Alaska and Georgia right now, so what I want to disucss is all the smoke from these fires, where is it going?
Glacier Creek is in Colorado and we are about 1,200 miles from the Arizona fires but there is a lot of smoke in the air here. We can’t even see the mountains and the sun is having trouble shining through all the haze. There have been reports of smoke in Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma as well, all from the Arizona fires.
So how did the smoke get to Colorado and can you figure out where it will go next?
The answer lies in how storms and wind travel across the United States. Due to the jet stream (you can look this up on the internet) most weather travels from the west coast (California) to the east coast (Washington DC) and all the states inbetween are affected by this weather depending on the time of year. If a storm starts in California it might only get rain because it is warm there. Colorado will get snow because of the high mountains and Missouri may get rain and tornados. It will then move to the northeasten part of the US and they will get snow and down south hey tmay only get rain or nothing will happen at all, the clouds will just pass over them.
Since the fires are so large in AZ and there are two of them buring right now, there is a massave amount of smoke going up into the air and the wind is blowing it to the east. So all the states that are east of AZ will get the smoke. So using this wind information, where will the smoke from the Gerogia fire go? What about the Alaska fire? Both of these fires are the same size at the Wallow Fire, so get out your atlas and figure out what states or land is east of these two places? Will the smoke get to the state where you live?
When I was in high school, Mount St Helen’s, a volcano, in Washigton State errupted and I really didn’t think much about it. A few days later when I went to get in my car to drive to school there was about one inch of ash covering my car. My first thought was, what is this and where did it come from? I asked my science teacher about it and he told me it was from the volcano. But it’s over 2,000 miles from Colorado, I stated? He told me that most of the western US would have ash falling out of the sky for up to a week of more, all from this volcano I didn’t know anything about.
I learned from Mount St Helen’s all about the jet stream and how storms and wind affect the US. Take some time while you are off this summer and learn about the jet stream. You can also Google the fires and get daily updates on what is happening.
Stay safe and have a great summer. If anything is happening in Glacier Creek I will keep you updated.
All the animals say “hi” and Max has a new nest in the tree outside the fire station. He needed more room for his communications equipment.
Karen
