It's pretty crazy out here right now. The air quality for my zip code (97209) is 325 and it was 95 in Shanghai. Brunswick, OH where I grew up is 29. 100 is unhealthy, and Shanghai was . This with fires still being 30 miles away (ish) and east of here. Last I read, about 500k people have been evacuated, and many small towns have been completely burned to the ground (look up Phoenix or Talent, Oregon). I've had friends who live in small towns that have been evacuated, and many more who are in the outskirts of Portland are on level 2 warnings.

For size reference on the map below, From Portland to Eugene is about 120 miles, and from Salem to Warm Springs is about 100 miles. The Beachie Creek and Lionshead fires combined look to be about 70 miles wide and adding in Riverside, it is about 40 miles north to south. Nearly 900,000 acres have burned in less than a week.

PDX and Portland - hope you guys are safe. Same goes with anyone else in danger. I'm not a very religious person, but I'll ask for prayers for the half million already evacuated and the 3-3.5 million at risk in Oregon, plus the millions in Washington, California, Idaho, etc... that are at risk. Few of us in Oregon want the rainy season to come early, but this year I think we all want it.


Current Fire Maps:
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6329d5e4e13748b9b9f7f33f06a3c376/

Picture out my window (about 1/2 mile visibility, and that's not fog...even indoors it smells like a campfire)
https://i.postimg.cc/BQwp81dT/91120.jpg

Air quality index
https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Portland&state=OR&country=USA

Shame this wildfire got caused by a gender reveal party and has been made even worse due to man-made global warming.

Hope all our Cali area dawgs stay safe.

I think about 0.4% of all the acres being burned are the Gender reveal party..

Extremely high temperatures and extremely little rain (both of which are becoming much more probable due to global warming) are the big causes.

That was one of the Cali wildfires, the Oregon ones are not related. The ones in Oregon are reported as being naturally caused, but human caused. Nonetheless, I agree on your comments on the Cali fire.

And I do not believe CA has even reached peak wildfire season.

Vegas has been hazy all week.

It’s really bad here. Just Google “Bobcat Fire”. It’s the town I live in. The air is barely breathable. There is ash everywhere. Even going outside for short periods of time is rough. I have lived here my whole life and there has never been a fire this bad. It is currently 6% contained and they estimate it won’t be 100% contained until mid-October. If the winds kick in at all many people will lose houses.

My family is currently fine (other than not being able to go outside). We will have to evacuate if things get worse. We can see flames from our front yard. They are about one mile away at this point.

I will post pictures later if I can get on my computer.

Prayers go out to you and your family. I know that may not seem like much, but it's the best I can do.

I won’t lie. I’m a little freaked out. I live on the edge of the Level 1 area in Clackamas county. In Milwaukie. This was the view from my kitchen window two nights ago. No filters used in these photos.

This was from my backyard yesterday...


I have seven 80’+ tall conifers of various types on my property. If an ember hits them... it’s over. They’ll explode like those trees on Elk Rock Island did a couple night back.
I’m going to mask up and clean my gutters and rake the pine needles from my yard when I get home from work later. Not that it’ll make much difference but it’s the little I can do.

My girlfriend and I packed bug out bags. I unloaded the safe into a duffle bag. We’ve organized our pet’s food and needs. My truck is gassed up and ready to roll.
If it gets this deep into town all hell will have broken loose. The roads will be chaos.
Frankly I’m not sure where we’ll go. Neither of us have family in the state. Any of our friends are just a couple miles away. Mostly in SE Portland. If it reaches us they’ll be evacuating next. The city will be on fire.

Some of my friends have evacuated. One may have lost their home outside Eagle Creek.

Pray for the winds to shift and come in from the west to help keep the fire moving more to the East. Away from town. Pray that the rain expected on Tuesday gets going on Monday night. Pray it’s substantial amounts.
Pray for those that have lost their homes, their lives, or their loved ones.
Pray for the men and women on the frontlines of these fires. Risking their lives.

It’s stressful.

Will be thinking about you, I hope you and your loved ones all stay safe.

Prayers go out to you and everyone in your area.

I'm with you on evac - not sure what to do if it gets near downtown. Can't go south, limited on north or east. Maybe the coast and camp on the beach? Not even sure if we can fly out.

I'd offer you my place, but I'm in 720 sq ft downtown. If all else fails, reach out to me, we'll make it work.

Portland and cfrs, scary stuff. As if this year hasn't already brought enough.

Take care you guys. Be safe.

I’ve heard the fairgrounds in McMinville are open for evacuees.

SO sorry to see y'all dealing with this, stay safe bro.

Portland is creating evacuation sites as well. Not sure what that means yet, but it is a start.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/e...1d-ae10e4ca0804

I"m sure you covered all the bases, and if you have to go, are told to go, or just feel you need to leave, DO IT.

Stay safe.

My best to all out there.. Has to be nerve racking !

They should be cleaning their forests floors.

We’re considering bailing if we get to level 2. The roads will already be a cluster f but at least we’ll be ahead of the next wave of evacuees.
Just got home. I still have all my nursing documentation to do but I’m going to spend some time photographing/video recording my belongings for insurance purposes. Further pack my truck with camping gear and other ‘essentials’. Clean my gutters. Rake my pine needle covered front yard. Basically further prep for the worst case scenario.

Bingo ! Someone mentioned that there is not a big problem on Privately held forests ( think Georgia Pacific and the like )out on the Coast or North West.

Man, I'm praying for you guys.

I wish they would institute a better program of clearing and replanting, so that all of the dry underbrush never gets a chance to accumulate in such large quantities.

I have 3 huge evergreens in my back yard that have to be almost 100". I hate to think what would happen if they would ever catch fire ..... and that's just 3.

Mono culture stands of Douglas Fir of all the same age is not the answer in the grand scheme. Those aren’t ‘forests’. They’re tree farms. The biodiversity of plants and animals is not good in those stands.

This is very scary. Please be safe.

Stay safe. Looking at your city's website, hopefully, they can keep it at bay....as you said, as long as the winds don't pick up.

https://www.cityofmonrovia.org/your-government/bobcat-fire

It is nasty, and I am about 50 miles from the Valley fire. I went bike riding this morning with probably was not the best idea. After 20 miles I could taste the ash, so I called it a day. It has been hazy for days.

The ash is so bad here. If you go outside for more than a couple minutes your mouth taste like ash. I’ve noticed a few birds and squirrels really struggling outside.

Cfr, are you going to post some pics from your house? I'm curious what you are seeing out there.

Sorry to hear that. I can't understand why a bird would hang around during that instead of trying to fly out of it.

There’s nowhere to go. It’s smoky for miles and miles and miles in every direction.

It looks like this change in weather has really helped. I saw Sandy and Canby were lowered to L1 evacuation. The Powerline fire is in good shape (I've reached out to friend that has a vineyard in the heart of it, I hope he wasn't impacted) and the Bald Peak fire is 75% contained. Even the big ones seem to have at least slowed. I really hope we get the rain that was forecasted and that it sticks around for a few days.

Now a heavy fog has moved into town. Cuz smoke/fog has to have its place on the 2020 apocalypse bingo card too.

I was talking to someone yesterday and he said all we're missing this year is a volcanic eruption.

And meteors crashing into earth.

It’s four hours to the nearest clean air.

Wow, this map is insane...

We had an AQI of 524 last night when I checked (worst in the world). For reference, >300 is hazardous. China is normally 150-200. Cleveland is 34 right now. We are at 440 right now, and visibility is about 1/2 mile again.

Unfortunately the rain that was supposed to be here today or tomorrow isn't coming, but 60% chance for Thursday is promising.

Here are some pictures and a video I took from my neighborhood.

The first one is the first night of the fire. (It's blurry because it's very zoomed in.)



This one shows the air quality and the view of the fire a few blocks from my house.



A helicopter just finished dropping water and flew right over our house.



The last one is from a local photographer who posted pictures on the city's Facebook page.



The air quality has gotten better over the last 48 hours. It's still really bad though (definitely not safe for kids to play outside or to exercise). The fire is still only 6% contained but I expect that number to go up quickly now. The city's website says that there are nearly 900 firefighters working on the fire with something like eight planes and ten helicopters doing drops 24/7. The two cities to the west of us, Arcadia and Sierra Madre, had to evacuate some houses in the hills. No structures have burned yet but as the fire moves down the canyon I think some will burn.

(Yes, I created a Twitter handle just to post these pictures on here.)

thanks for posting. glad the prognosis seems positive there too

We've been lucky. The Santa Ana winds are supposed to start any day now but have held off. If they start up it's going to get a lot worse very fast.

i hope they hold off longer

Thanks for sharing.

Crazy.

God, I can't imagine the decision that goes into bailing. Your life is the most important thing but man, that would feel so sad\weird to leave everything behind like that. I pray that none of it happens.

The area I live is no longer under level one. We cleared that yesterday. I’m now out of the danger zone baring some unknown freakish weather event or such.
That said my bags are still packed.

Good news. I saw a shadow today!! Weird to be happy about something so inconsequential in normal day to day life, but the sun has been blotted out for days and days now. The sky yellow and the light flat. This evening I wasn’t able to look at the sun either. I know, you shouldn’t look at the sun, but we’ve been able to for days. Today I couldn’t. When I looked up at it at one point I could see a few clouds through the smoky haze.
I’m grateful for those little things now.

This was the sun at about 2pm yesterday. No filter on the photo...

I'm jealous. Nothing near sun downtown. I can barely see the west hills and they're 1/2 mile away (ish). I had a friend from Sauvie Island post sunny pics on instagram yesterday. This is wonderful to think about.

Last night I saw some stars for the first time in about a week and the sky was a slight hue of blue.

This is a new mask I just opened compared to my mask I’ve used to save me from the smoke for the limited outdoor time I’ve spent over the past 10 or so days. The usage time mainly consists of walking my puppy Charlie for 20 minutes twice a day. (It sucks to have to walk him in this. I feel awful about exposing him to the smoke but you try raising a 4 month old 40 pound puppy inside for two weeks.) I did watch the Browns game out in my barn with a couple of buddies. Barn doors open for COVID purposes, not that closed doors would have made a difference in that outbuilding anyway. My buddies also wore N95 type masks much of the time. Beer drinking and such excluded. I also cleaned my gutters and raked pine needles in my front yard with this on. Still, even with a 3 hour football game, probably a total of 10 or so hours in all.
This is what we on the west coast have been dealing with.

It’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow. There’s a chance of lightning which is the last thing we need. Pray for good amounts of rain.

Thanks for the update. Sad conditions. Praying you'll get plenty of rain and no more fires ignited by the lightening.

Another good sign... I saw a really defined shadow today. I saw a faint one yesterday or so but this one was real. Weird thing to get excited over but it’s a sign of clearing skies. I’ll take any sign I can get.

Me and my shadow...

Damned cute pup!

He’s been a good apocalypse companion. He’s sweet and smart. A little stubborn. At least more so than Samson was. But that’s the Mastiff in him. He and the cats finally get along which makes being inside much easier. Took a couple weeks of leashing him inside the house to teach him about the cats and our expectations of his behaviors. Prior to the fires/smoke we’d basically moved out to the barn during waking hours. Only coming in to eat or sleep. We have a TV and stereo and such out there. It’s essentially my man cave living room. It made having a puppy easy. We didn’t have to worry about him tearing up furniture and such and he just had to step out into the grass to pee when he needed. We trained him his basic commands and taught him our ‘alpha’ roles before having to bring him in much during the day. Now he behaves well, for a 4 month old puppy. He also knows to pee outside. So as long as we pay attention to his sitting by the backdoor we don’t have to worry about accidents inside.
All in all it’s been good. He’s not Samson. He’s Charlie. I love the little guy.

Cute doggio.

Here is a link to Getty-the photographer of some of the wildfires was on twitter and posted a link to the pictures. I think this is the link as some of the pictures are in this batch

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/calif...ort=mostpopular

That face, right?!


This is him about a week and 4 pounds ago. That’s Samson’s old adult bed.

Sorry to side track this thread...

Here’s a link to a crazy satellite image gif type file that show the smoke and fires. It’s insane.
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iQnreRPp8aQg/v0/-999x-999.gif

Correct. My cat, Sammy, is getting old. Best bud in the world, really. Wife says he acts more like a dog than our dog. He's a runt barn cat that just showed up 1 day.

He lives in my pole barn, except at night, if it's warm enough for him outside. Greets me every morning, and afternoon. Sits on my shoulders watching the computer screen when I'm on.

He's getting older, and skinny. I've wondered often times if I'll get another cat when he passes, IF he goes before I do. And I've often thought "there won't be another Sammy", but if I get another one, he/she will be who they are.

Oh, we have a dog. He likes my wife, and my daughter. He tolerates me.

You gave him a name with a great tradition.

My lab from many years ago was names Charlie. He was a stray, and stunk like rotted tuna fish .... so ....... Charlie, right? He was a great dog, and I had him for over 17 years.

Your Charlie looks like a great dog too. I love brindle coloring on a dog.

Today has been the first day in over a week that the air quality has been in the range where it is okay to good outside.

Oh, my God.
This puts quite a fine point on things.

Please stay safe, My Friend.

I was awoken by thunderstorms last night. Heavy rain here in my hood. Never been so happy to hear it. It’s too dark out yet to see if the smoke has cleared up some but the sun is coming up on what’s hopefully the day of the beginning of the end of this tragedy.

Yeah, more than and inch in many places. I'm not sure how much it helped, but Riverside is 10% contained last I looked.

Of course, with rainy season coming, I'm worried about landslides. Crazy

The IPCC have been on point, on all of their climate projections.

I’m tired of the air quality alerts. I’m tired of educated Americans denying this.