Fire Facts For Fools
MAGA stupid burns
There is stupid.
Then there is Michigan MAGA stupid.
That’s so stupid, it burns on its own.
In February and March, the National Fire - named because it was in a National Preserve - burned through over 14,000 hectares (that’s 35,000 acres) in southwestern Florida.
At times, the fire caused officials to close I-75 and other highways. It took a multi-agency response with more than 150 people on the ground with equipment as well as four helicopters and three fixed-wing aircraft and their crews in the air and on the ground to get it under control.
Plus rain.
A good, solid rain.
And cooler weather.
And 23 days.
Farther north and just this past few weeks, lightning triggered literally hundreds of fires in the dense, dry forests of Minnesota and Ontario. Some are now monsters, eating people’s homes and all sorts of property.
In Ontario alone, 6000 square kilometres (2300 square miles) have burned so far this year.
About 24,000 square kilometres (9200 square miles) have burned in the rest of the country, from Yukon to Labrador. When Labrador is burning, it’s a bad year for fires.
Most of the fires are in isolated, even roadless regions. The population is nowhere near as large or dense as Florida, but the sheer size of the fires means that communities will be threatened.
Sadly, there are already reports of Indigenous communities where people have lost homes, community centres, stores and businesses.
Namaygoosisagagun is surrounded by fires. Members of its First Nation had to flee in boats across the lake. “Once we left my house finally after packing what I could in a pack sack, the fire was right behind our place,” one member of NFN told APTN news. “We had to run to the beach and once we got there, it was only moments before the fire had jumped over the (train) track and was coming for us.”
The fire is called THU0036 in the Ontario provincial government’s online tracking system. THU0036 is actually a merger of multiple fires that have collectively burned over 3,700 square kilometres (about 1,450 square miles), most of it in the past few days. THU0036 - named for the region it started in - in the centre of this screen grab from Thursday night of the Ontario fire map.
At times this week, THU0036 was consuming an area the size of a typical North American city block every second. Fires like this can generate their own weather, weather that makes more lightning that makes more fires.
THU0036 is more than twenty times the size of Liechtenstein, 21 times the size of the District of Columbia, 12 times Malta, or eight times larger than the Island of Montreal.
It is six times the size of the sprawling cities of Toronto or Chicago, five times bigger than Edmonton, the centre of the universe, or five times the size of New York City. That’s with all five boroughs.
One-and-a-half Luxembourgs or Rhode Islands. Bigger than the City of Ottawa, Lake Melville, Mallorca, or the federal riding of Michael Barrett, M.P.
It is nearly as large as Lake Nipigon, and would make up ten percent of the national landmass of Switzerland, the Netherlands, or Denmark.
And it is just one of literally hundreds of lightning-induced fires in a region of Minnesota and Ontario that stretches over hundreds of kilometres (miles) across the international border.
The border-crossing fire belt is about the size of the entire State of Georgia.
The picture is that fire belt, with Lake Nipigon, Lake Superior, and THU0036 labelled.
The hotspots to the west, outlined in red?
That’s the size of that massive Florida fire.
Frist saw reference on this piece on your FB posting, so not at near 9am , a bit late reading it. and a great title Fire Facts For Fools, .....4 , four F words that are not considered vulgar.
You note the issue of big fire create unusual cloud formation that reach very high altitude , and that lightning starts many fires.
To take this further : these unusual fires of that nature creates their own weather patterns, can generate new lightning strikes miles away starting new fires, and are not controllable. And too, the incidents of lightning worldwide is increasing and even recent years lightning hits near to the north pole, ..... as Trump would say (but never would on this matter) "such as never seen before" . Lightning is normally much more rare in northern vs southern areas, as snow, ice and permafrost are highly resistant to electricity conduction. With this happing in these areas is consistent with climate breakdown, that gets worse and can be reinforcing in feedback loops, that is tipping points foe this planets climate.
This year we are about to see a Super El Nino event that peaks about Nov or Dec and events next year from that will be worse than this year with significant damage to world wide agriculture , flooding, drought etc , hitting some regions much worse than others.
Lately, climate impacts is getting more TV coverage as leading stories world wide.
There must be a general realization that we are in a deep hole and are just digging deeper as to climate going crazy, even impacting major sport events etc.
And yet few make the connection of the Trump and MAGA " drill baby drill" approach , and even locally as to offshore oil development. (as you have noted , we are essentially a "petro state", as to dependency , like Alberta or the Arab countries of the Middle East with vast reserves of oil and gas.
Question ...Ed, are these climate event of concern to you and as to the cause , and as many scientists are now fearful of doing too little , too late , to stop , to reduce and roll back the man made causes of this ? After 30 years of talks on this worldwide , we are digging a hole at even a faster and accelerating rate!
Electrical engineers should have some insight in this more than others, as to lightning, and current and voltage, magnetic and electric fields etc. , and impacts on climate . .... and tied int the value of the Churchill River system value, as a relatively green and renewable resource.. and why HQ covets that to the benefit of PQ.