The FMJ Weather Channel

The past few days have been better each day. Mostly sunny and light winds. Monday was only in the 50's but got warmer for highs until today it topped out at a beautiful 71. Daytime humidity has been like 15-25% which means it still gets cold at night (has been mid/high 30's). Tomorrow is forecast the same as today and then the weekend,,,,,,,,,,,oh man! Sunshine, low humidity still, winds 2-5mph, upper 70's to 80 degrees both day........................It's almost like a dream!

Monday it might rain but we need it bad. So far this month there's been a total of .59" (according to the 6pm news) and the fire danger shows "EXTREMELY HIGH". Slightest spark and POOF. A CN train sparked off half a dozen fires along the tracks here yesterday. Gosh darn Canadian's, I tell ya! lol
 
Ft. Mac fire haw been going on for 3 weeks. Burned up a couple of thousand buildings in the southern part of the city. City had been completely evacuated (all 83,000 people). They may start going back later this week or early next week. Fire is to the north of the city now, around the area where the oil sands operations are (no danger to the actual operations). A couple of the work camps out there have burned down. There are 208 helicopters, 29 water bombers, and 1728 fire fighters fighting fires in Northern Alberta right now, although they are not all at the Ft. Mac site. A bigger fire has started up the in the NW of Alberta, and may be in BC soon.
 
That is amazing.
Have been watching on the news and it didn't make sense. Texas fires burn up 5 or 10 thousand acres and its normal. At least where I grew up in west Texas. Might lose a few houses and a barn with some animals, couple of businesses. But the fire moves fast, usually burns up the biomass quickly and hits a firebreak --- roads, creeks, plowed field, etc.
If it does get near a town that has to evacuate, its a few hundred people. Never have a town of 83k evacuated unless its down on the coast and there is a refinery involved with escaping gas or possiblity of explosion.

But then, most of the time the bigger fires are out west, less population, more grass, fewer trees. If it does get into trees its usually mesquite that suck what little water is in the ground out of it so its no big loss.

I cannot imagine having all the trees (biomass) and undergrowth, no rain so everything is very dry, winds from the jet stream hitting you and most of the folks densely populated near the fire.

Good luck to you all..
 
The residents will be going back into the city soon. The provincial gov't is working on getting all the infrastructure (electricity, water, sewage, natural gas) back into shape before they allow the residents to return. They have set up assistance and funding for those who lost their houses. Looks like there will be a lot of cleaning up going on long term. The news reports made it sound like the whole city burned down, but 85-90% of the buildings are fine. Area around Ft. Mac is pretty heavily forested, but almost no snow this winter and fairly warm all winter, along with next to no rain this spring, and everything catches fire pretty easy.
 
They've got a LOT more trees up there than us "southerners". Well,,,,,,,,,,,had more.

There was a point where we could see a haze in the sky and once in a while even smell smoke from those fires way over here in Wisconsin. One big ass fire. I can't even imagine what it'd be like to have to evacuate your home and not know if it'll be there or not when you're allowed back.

We had a couple more fires caused by trains today I heard on the news. No rain for a week or more and barely over 1/2" this month, combined with sunshine and humidity below 25% all that time,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,tinder box. Open burning is banned right now and any other burning is highly discouraged (like a fireplace).

However, it was 77 degrees today, mostly sunny, the aforementioned 18% humidity and the wind was 2-4 mph gusting as high as 5 mph. I'd call it perfect! Made it really hard to concentrate and stay focused at work. Weekend is still showing the same as today except maybe a couple degrees warmer. About time!
 
Its still going. There was a slight bit of rain today, and the wind shifted so it isn't growing as quckly. So far, in this one fire (nicknamed "The Beast"), 1.2 million acres have burned up. There are a LOT of trees up in Nothern Alberta, and Alberta isn't one of the provinces with a large forest area (Quebec probably has the largest forest area' check out a map; pretty much everything outside of the major cities is forest).

From news paper reports, it seems like a lot of the organic matter on the forest floor is burning up, and it is going deeper into the soil than tney first thought. It will make it harder to keep the fire out once they do get it under control, and may take the forest longer to recover than it normally does.
 
I don't fully get the Ft McMurray fire.
I have a hydrant on my front lawn.
Maybe hose stuff down?
The fire jumped a river, because someone couldn't use river water on the fire?

I smell insurance scam due to the low oil prices.

And then there's the media's POOR English.
Where do they get 'Mac' out of Mc?
 
Now it's warmed up, the street gangs are out in full force.
Right now it's raining lead.
I've heard over 30 gun shots and no cops.
Means it's too dangerous for the cops.
 
Dr Lebaron said:
I don't fully get the Ft McMurray fire.
I have a hydrant on my front lawn.
Maybe hose stuff down?
The fire jumped a river, because someone couldn't use river water on the fire?

I smell insurance scam due to the low oil prices.

And then there's the media's POOR English.
Where do they get 'Mac' out of Mc?
Click to expand...

Stuff was hosed down, the entire city was hosed down. Even in a town of only 83,000 do you realize how much water is needed to keep the city hosed down? Especially considering that that the hosed down buildings dry in about 3-4 hours, and the river was unusually low, again due to very low snowfall in the winter, and a very, very dry spring. The fire jumped the river because embers from the one side of the river got blown over to the other side. The other side was watered down, but it all starts at ground level, all it takes is for it to get started in one spot, and no matter how much watering you do, the tree's interiors, the forest floor, and grass is still quite dry and the surface water just boils off. As soon as the first flames start, and get burning, the surface water doesn't matter, it evaporates and the fire spreads, fast, faster than anybody can run.

No doubt that there will be some who try to get some insurance money, but most residents didn't have much warning, maybe a few hours at maximum. In any case, only a 2000-3000 buildings burned up. Most of the people who evactuated didn't have a chance to pack much of anything. Insurance scam may be possible in the southern part of Ft. Mac, but would be hugely suspicious in any other part of Ft. Mac, as in why was it only your house in this area that got burned down? None of the other buildings in the area show the slightest sign of fire damage or even smoke residue.

The actual oil sites are not in any danger. I'm sure that the oil sands companies would have liked some of their sites burn up, but industry and provincial safety legislation require that the forest be cut back around any production sites quite a distance. Over and above that, all the pipelines into and out of the sites are required, by law, to be underground. The oil sands don't burn because of their chemistry, the natural gas sites have already been shut down in that area.

It is spelled Ft. Mac, because it is pronounced that way and is easier to read. Writing it out as Ft. Mc. just looks weird. It is spelled out as Ft. Mac by all in Alberta, whether they be in the media or not. Our guys, in their reports write is out as Ft. Mac and have been for years.
 
Still bone dry but fortunately, no gigantic fires. Actually pretty amazing that the only fires have been along train tracks, considering no rain for quite a while and before that it wasn't much, along with no humidity.

Beautiful day today! Clear, little wind, basically no humidity (about 16%), and it's 81 degrees. Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Should say hazy clear sky. Guess the haze is still smoke from the fires up there in Canada. That's a long ways for the smoke to go. It's like 1,500 miles away from here. Dang!
 
Five hours of light rain from 5:30 til 10:30, then a break til 1:30.. been raining lightly for 30 minutes.
Humid and getting hot .. lots of thunder today
 
Hazy clear sky, basically no humidity and 87 today. The fly in the ointment is the SW wind at 10-30 mph. With no rain for so long and no humidity either, it's like the Great American Dust Bowl all over again. My eyes feel like they're full of sand, and probably are.
 
Less than 3 weeks ago it actually snowed here. Less that two weeks ago I had my heat on........and now???

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