The fire is burning near the scars from three very large fires from 2015
(UPDATED at 7:35 p.m. PDT August 16, 2016)
The Clayton Fire grew by 67 acres on Monday, but it was on the northeast side near the footprint of last year’s Rocky Fire. This brings the size of the burned area up to 3,945 acres.
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(UPDATED at 8:40 p.m. PDT August 15, 2016)
CAL FIRE is now reporting that the size of the Clayton Fire at Lower Lake, California is estimated at 4,000 acres. There has been no change in the number of structures burned.
A man has been arrested for starting the Clayton Fire and numerous others. Below is an excerpt from an article in The San Francisco Chronicle:
County officials arrested a 40-year-old Clear Lake man Monday on 17 counts of arson related to numerous fires set over the last year, including the 4,000-acre Clayton Fire that has so far claimed 175 buildings and displaced hundreds of people.
Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin and Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott announced the arrest of Damin Pashilk at a community meeting packed with evacuees at a casino doubling as a Red Cross shelter south of the blaze. Residents gasped at the announcement.
“All 17 counts resulted from a very extensive investigation of numerous fire starts over the last year,” Pimlott said.
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(UPDATED at 9:03 a.m. PDT August 15, 2016)
CAL FIRE public information officer Daniel Berlant reported at 9 a.m. on Monday that the Clayton Fire has burned approximately 175 structures.
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(UPDATED at 7:33 a.m. PDT August 15, 2016)
The Clayton Fire burned into the community of Lower Lake, California Sunday afternoon preceded by spot fires started from the burning embers the wind threw out ahead of the blaze igniting many homes and businesses.
At 6:45 a.m. on Monday CAL FIRE estimated that “100+” structures and 3,000 acres have burned.
The fire started Saturday and had died down Sunday morning, but strong erratic winds developed that pushed the fire very rapidly to the north into Lower Lake.
The fire occurred in an area that experienced three large fires in 2015, the Valley, Rocky, and Jerusalem Fires which together burned approximately 159,000 acres.
Originally published at 8:32 p.m. PDT August 14, 2016 Updated at 10:06 p.m. PDT August 14.).
CAL FIRE reports that as of 8 p.m. on Sunday the Clayton Fire has burned 10 structures, including at least 4 residences, near Lower Lake, California, just southeast of Clearlake and 31 air miles northeast of Santa Rosa.
Based on reports from other sources, the actual number of structures destroyed is likely to rise.
After the fire started at 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 13, it burned aggressively north, crossing Morgan Valley Road and Cache Creek, impacting the communities of Lower Lake and Clearlake. St. Helena Hospital in Clearlake has been evacuated. Additional structures are threatened and mandatory evacuations are in place.
A wildland firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service was killed Saturday August 13 while working on the Strawberry Fire near Baker, Nevada.
The National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service confirmed that Justin Beebe, a firefighter with the Lolo Hotshots based in Missoula, Montana, succumbed to injuries suffered when he was struck by a tree. The line of duty death of the Bellows Falls, Vermont firefighter will be investigated by the Forest Service.
“This loss of life is tragic and heartbreaking,” said Park Superintendent, Steve Mietz “Please keep the family and Forest Service employees in your thoughts and prayers during this time.”
The Strawberry Fire is being managed jointly by Great Basin Incident Management Team 7, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. It is burning mostly in Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada 10 miles west of the Utah/Nevada state line. Since starting from lightning on August 8 it has burned 4,600 acres, but satellites have not detected much heat on the fire since Friday, August 12.
The yellow dots represent the location of the Strawberry Fire August 14, 2016.Strawberry Fire. Photo by Steve Mietz.
Our sincere condolences go out to Mr. Beebe’s family, friends, and coworkers.
These two recently filmed videos illustrate what can happen over a fire when thermal instability and available vorticity combine.
The Cornelius (Oregon) Fire Department posted this video on August 12, 2016 showing an impressive fire whirl.
The video below was filmed by Stewart Turner August 5, 2016 on the Pioneer Fire in Idaho. You will see a definite rotation, or convection column vortex. While this one is not as violent as, say, a conventional tornado, the change in wind direction or the collapse of the column can cause a serious problem for nearby firefighters.
The news media sometimes calls any little fire whirl a “fire tornado, or even a “firenado”. We found out today that these and related terms (except for “firenado”) were, if not founded, at least documented and defined in 1978 by a researcher for the National Weather Service in Missoula, David W. Goens. He grouped fire whirls into four classes:
Fire Devils. They are a natural part of fire turbulence with little influence on fire behavior or spread. They are usually on the order of 3 to 33 feet in diameter and have rotational velocities less than 22 MPH.
Fire Whirls. A meld of the fire, topograph, and meteorological factors. These play a significant role in fire spread and hazard to control personnel. The average size of this class is usually 33 to 100 feet, with rotational velocities of 22 to 67 MPH.
Fire Tornadoes. These systems begin to dominate the large scale fire dynamics. They lead to extreme hazard and control problems. In size, they average 100 to 1,000 feet in diameter and have rotational velocities up to 90 MPH.
Fire Storm. Fire behavior is extremely violent. Diameters have been observed to be from 1,000 to 10,000 feet and winds estimated in excess of 110 MPH. This is a rare phenomenon and hopefully one that is so unlikely in the forest environment that it can be disregarded.
Mr. Goens further described three different types of fire whirls generated:
The Thermally Driven Form. This results from some type of shear in the horizontal airflow coupled with the energy release (convection) from fire activity.
The Convection Column Vortex. This form is poorly understood. It originates high in the convection column (up to 1000 feet) and extends in the ground as much as a fourth (1/4) mile on the leeward side of the fire.
The Wake-Type Whirl. This results from the generation of eddies caused by airflow around an obstacle coupled with heat released by the fire.
Mr. Gowns continued:
All three of these types can be a significant problem in the spread or control of fire. The fire whirl in its steady-state form, i.e., after it has formed and before it begins to collapse, has two sharply defined regions of differing airflow (Byron and Martin 1970). The cooler, slowly rotating zone surrounds a central core of hot gases with high horizontal and vertical velocities. This central core can have temperatures from 1,800° to 2,400°F and burning rates two to seven times normal. Flame height can be 10 to 50 times the core diameter. Fire spread occurs when burning debris entrained into the column just above the surface boundary layer is carried aloft and then cast out from the upper portion of the whirl core some time later. The path of the whirl can be quite erratic; therefore, direction and rate of spread are almost impossible to forecast.
One of the best videos of a large fire whirl or fire tornado was shot by Chris Tangey of Alice Springs Film and Television in 2012 while he was scouting locations near Curtin Springs station in Australia. It is used here with his permission.
And lastly, I filmed this next video at the USFS Fire Lab in Missoula in 2014, showing an artificially created fire whirl.
Often on a wildfire we see members of the community displaying signs thanking the firefighters. It is less common to see an organized effort that goes in the other direction — firefighters thanking the community.
On the Roaring Lion Fire southwest of Hamilton, Montana five people representing the first responders and firefighters appeared in a video expressing their appreciation for the support they received from the community.
In the video you’ll see:
Hamilton Fire Chief Brad Mohn
Ravalli County Sheriff Chris Hoffman
Northern Rockies Incident Management Team Incident Commander Greg Poncin
Above: A small meteor, part of the Perseid Meteor Shower, streaks through the sky over the Black Hills very early Friday morning.
I had been hearing about the Perseid Meteor Shower for weeks. Usually this annual event produces a pretty good show, around 80 meteors an hour as the Earth passes through the streams of debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. But this was forecast to be special, due to something about the gravity of Jupiter bending the stream of dust just enough to nudge it about 930,000 miles closer to Earth. Scientists said there could be as many as 150 to 200 meteors an hour.
I had attempted to photograph a meteor shower once before — and had zero luck. With this rare opportunity presenting itself, I decided to try again. And to me, this was a momentous decision, because these showers are never scheduled in prime time. They occur in the wee hours of the morning, like 1 a.m or 3 a.m.
So I made my preparations. I reviewed and rehearsed all of the settings on my camera, a Sony A7II full-frame mirrorless camera body, because you can’t simply use the automatic mode to shoot pictures of the night sky. I updated the camera’s firmware, made sure I had three extra charged batteries, dug out a couple of flashlights, checked to see if my 28mm wide angle lens needed a firmware update (it didn’t), and practiced using the Sony app on my iPhone to control the camera. With the app I can trigger the shutter (eliminating camera shake as it is depressed) and change the shutter speed, ISO, and aperture. I can also view the photos on the iPhone just after they are taken, making it possible to adjust the exposure or the framing as needed. I also grabbed a compact external battery for the iPhone, thinking that constantly using the phone to control the camera for an hour or two might suck the phone’s battery dry (it didn’t).
My research found that the area of the sky from which the meteors would come, the constellation Perseus, would appear above the horizon shortly after sunset. But, the moon would keep the sky too bright to easily see meteors until it set at 12:48 a.m. at my location in the southern Black Hills of South Dakota.
I went to bed at 11 p.m. Thursday night after setting the alarm for 12:40 a.m. My plan was to arrive in Wind Cave National Park after all the residual moonlight had disappeared, making the sky as dark as possible at that location 10 air miles from the small town of Hot Springs.
As I drove into the park, the speed limit reduced from 65 to 45 mph. It’s low in the park in part because at that speed it’s easier to avoid hitting one of the hundreds of buffalo that call it home. On a moonless night, a black buffalo is difficult to see against an asphalt road. A few get hit every year, and a 1,600-pound buffalo can ruin your night.
I slowed down to 40 as I drove the last five miles through the park to my destination on Highway 87. I have been a little jumpy lately about damaging my truck after hitting a deer a month ago (my first deer strike) near Devils Tower. I replaced the front bumper two weeks ago ($470) and as luck would have it, a few days ago I walked out of ShopKo and saw that while I was inside some butthole had hit that brand new bumper with their car. No note, of course. It’s scratched and not dented, thankfully, but that repair will cost me another $100.
So I scanned back and forth like radar looking for anything on the road. Then I saw something large and brown off the road near the edge of the light from my headlamps. Then another, and then there were 20 of them — elk — surrounded me on both sides of the road. They were not IN the road, so avoiding them was not a problem. But I was glad I was only going 40 mph as I slowed to about 10 moving through the herd. There were probably dozens more that I could not see on that moonless night.
Arriving safely at the turnout on Highway 87 south of the Beaver Creek bridge, I got out and scouted around for a good location for my tripod. I wanted something interesting in the foreground of the photos, not just a plain horizon. What I hope for in landscape photos is interesting stuff in three zones: the near ground, middle ground, and in the distance. At night, though, filling all three orders is not usually possible.
I took my flashlight and walked up a small hill checking out the possibilities, hesitant to use the flashlight because I didn’t want to destroy my night vision. It’s difficult to see stars if you’ve been blinded by a bright light. I wanted to get some trees at the bottom of my photos. The nearest ones were about 150 feet away. As I walked through the prairie grasses and small shrubs, mostly without the flashlight, I was hoping not to step on something I’d later regret, like a snake or a fresh buffalo chip. Every now and then I turned on the flashlight and looked in all directions; I didn’t want to invade the space of a dozing buffalo. Suddenly about 10 feet away there was the sound of a medium-sized bird taking off from the ground. A grouse, I assumed, but I never saw it.
Clouds drifted through the sky while I was attempting to photograph meteors.
I found a spot with a good view of the north and east horizons. The Perseus constellation would be in the northeast. I went back to the truck, again mostly without the flashlight, and retrieved my tripod and camera bag. Returning, I got everything set up and pointed the camera to the east with the trees at the bottom of the frame. I took a few single shots and made adjustments, settling on aperture of f2.0 (the largest opening in the lens possible, letting in the most light), shutter speed of 20 seconds (longer would leave star trails as they moved), and ISO of 2,000. Focusing manually was difficult because I could not see the stars in the viewfinder. I focused on a red light on a communications tower on Battle Mountain, 10 miles away, and tried to make sure that I didn’t accidently bump the focus dial after that, screwing up the focus.
The clouds were illuminated by city lights, probably from Rapid City, 33 miles away.
Then, using the iPhone app, I set the shutter to take continuous shots, one after the other automatically. The strategy in getting photos of meteors is to take many, many shots, hoping that you’ll get lucky and a meteor will pass in front of your camera while the shutter is open.
As the camera was happily shooting away, I would occasionally point it in a different direction, since there was about a 50 percent cloud cover that I had to shoot around. I also experimented with light, using a fairly powerful flashlight to illuminate various objects. Wearing all black, hoping the camera would not see me, I lit up some trees, just to see how it would turn out. And, with my back to the camera, I illuminated the ground and trees in front of me, hoping my silhouette would show up (it did).
The streak of light on the left is, unfortunately, not a meteor…. just an airplane.
After about an hour, and hoping I had something worthwhile in the camera, I packed up my gear and drove home, arriving at 3:30 a.m. I went back to bed, then a few hours later, got up and transferred the images from the memory card to my computer.
With my naked eye, I had seen about a dozen meteors in various parts of the sky and shot over 100 photos. One of them, ONE, included a meteor.
