Pocatello. ID. Today huge thunderclouds grew in the record high temperatures of Idaho, SE Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Western Wyoming and Western Montana. The edge of one is grumbling over the mountain range I live under at Pocatello right now.
So far all the fire starts in parched Idaho, Wyoming, and much of Utah have been human caused. I think tonight and tomorrow might be the start of the worst forest fire season in the Northern Rockies in a long time. I’ll be following it on this blog.
With fire season underway, national forests thin on senior staff. San Jose Mercury News (you can find this AP story elsewhere by Google News)
Update 1. Highest temperature ever in Missoula. Mercury in Missoula cracks triple digits. Missoulian. By Kim Briggeman.
Update 2: Yesterday, there was one major fire in Idaho. Today there are 12! Nevada had one major fire yesterday. Today there are nine.
Update 3: Heat wave fuels Western wildfires. Yahoo News. AP
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is President of the Western Watersheds Project.
I’ll be watching too…I had to pick THIS year to move into the forest.
I hope for the best. Maybe I should consider moving my truck and camper away from the trees.
We live in eastern utah about 15 miles from the huge fire here, everything is so dry and the damage that this fire has brought about is incredible, We will never recover the places we love in our lifetime and possible in our childrens lifetime, the sagebrush , cedar, and pinion trees don’t recover like other forests, I hope all are being really careful as all the west is really dry and this could happen anywhere!
I’m having very violent weather here in Cascade, Idaho right now with lightning, wind and very light rain. It was 95° today and I won’t be surprised if I wake up to raging fires someplace nearby.