Does the southwestern monsoon cause West Coast Wildfires? Monsoons are best known for bringing monsoonal rains but the term specifically refers to a change in a wind pattern, which may enable the presence of inclement weather. A wet monsoon may be a blessing if fighting flames. When winds sourced from the oceans moisten the hot,
Read MoreRecord highs fueled west coast wildfires in late August that are still mostly unmanaged. A heat wave at the end of August peaked in the Pacific Northwest on the 19th when it was 109 in Medford, OR and 91 in Seattle, WA but in the 100s east of the Cascades. Over 10,000 firefighters have heard
Read MoreThe Californian Wildfires of 2016 could get huge. California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) calls the disaster that started in Monterey County the Soberanes fire. It’s now known to have started on July 22, 2016 at an estimated 8:48 AM when a campfire near the Soberanes Canyon Trail got out of control. The
Read MoreAs spring rolls into summer state and federal land managers are bracing for the inevitable wildfires to start. The big question is what type of fire season will the West Coast have in 2016. In Washington State, there have been three so far of note. Two, oddly enough, in Western Washington of unannounced origin and
Read MoreTypical Formation of Cloud-to-Ground Lightning. Lightning manifests due to the breakdown of the insulating property of dry air. When the localized electrical potential gradient exceeds about three million volts within fifty meters, the phenomenon shoots electrons into a cloud and toward the ground as a stepped leader. Composed of discharges spanning about fifty to a
Read MorePhoto taken July 17, 2014 of wildfires in Washington. Image courtesy of NASA. Wildfires – Global Warming / Climate Change is a top topic during the summer of 2015. Wildfires from global warming and climate change are a microcosm of the Wild West. The age of horse-driven highway bandits may be over but wildfires still
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