More fires

Grants Pass came under very smokey skies on Thursday with a strong smell of smoke in the air. We are thinking that we will head north and east from here toward Crater Lake, so I've been looking at the incident report page to see if there are fires that may impact our drive up that way.

I found this on the report about one of the incidents (https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5966/):

On Sunday July 15, lightning started hundreds of fires across Southwest Oregon. They are rapidly being responded to by Forest Service, Oregon Department of Forestry, Bureau of Land Management, Local Fire Districts, Tribal and Crater Lake National Park firefighting resources. Although many fires have already been contained, as wind and visibility changes, more fires continue to be detected. For efficiency and improved safety, groups of fires are being managed together on specific land divisions.

The Northwest Incident Management Team #13 has been given responsibility for managing more than 10 fires on the Rogue River - Siskiyou National Forest's High Cascades Ranger District west of Crater Lake National Park. There are 8-10 fires west of Hwy 62 and 5-8 fires east of Hwy 62. Hwy 62 itself is not threatened in this area at this time.

The major fires are named Sugar Pine, Elk Horn, Round Top, Goodview and Union.

We plan to travel Highway 62, so I'll continue monitoring the situation.

I had blogged about the rain that we got on Sunday morning - it wasn't much rain, but there was lightning and thunder, and others mentioned the concern about fires starting.

When we were in California, friends had advised us that traffic on I-5 had been impacted by a fire a couple of days previous. When we drove through, there was a large section of the road where the land was burned on both sides of the highway. It is no longer an actively working fire, but I think you can see the outline on the map here: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5910

And, while we were in Nevada, I was watching the Martin Fire: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5899/
It is now considered 96% contained - I think the concern areas are within the boundaries where the fire already burned. Over 400,000 acres burned. The outline of the area is on the map at the link I posted.

I guess fires are just the norm for the summer in the northwest. We had not visited in this area until last year in September/October. I guess we should come in May-June instead!