Boing Boing pointed me to this satellite picture of the smoke plumes from the California fires. Just incredible. There’s also a photoblog of pictures of the fires. Neat and scary stuff.
Forest fires are something that I don’t really have a whole lot of experience with. They’d hit Alaska from time to time, but rarely (if ever) came anywhere close enough to Anchorage to cause any major concern. Occasionally there’d be a decent conflagration out in the Mat-Su valley (about 45 minutes outside of Anchorage), but most of the time, it wasn’t a major issue in town.
Not long after I moved down here to Seattle, my friends took me out to see the Bare Naked Ladies at the Gorge near George, Washington. That summer there were forest fires raging over Washington, and we could smell the fire in the air as we were driving out. At one point during the drive, the sky was bisected — clear and blue on one side, and murky with smoke on the other, nearly enough to blot out the sun. This picture doesn’t really do it justice, but it was incredible to see.
The stories posted of people coming out to find ash covering everything do sound very familiar, though — only for me, it was due to volcanoes. While I missed the Mt. Redoubt eruption in 1989/90 due to galavanting around Europe, in 1992 Mt. Spurr erupted not far outside of Anchorage, sending a cloud of ash all over the city. Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite as good a look at the effects as I could have.
I’d spent the day working at Fireweed Theaters, slinging popcorn at the snack bar. Got off my shift in the afternoon, probably around 5 or 6, and caught a ride home with a friend. As she was driving me home, we could see the sky darkening as the ash cloud moved in over the city. I had long hair at the time, and as we were heading across town, I wanted to let it down. I took the ponytail holder out of my hair, shook my head — and suddenly my glasses, which were a little old and not as tight as they should have been, went flying out the open window of the car and underneath the tires of the car behind us. Crap.
We pulled over and rescued what pieces we could, but the glasses were trashed. Given that I’m legally blind without my glasses, I spent the next day being driven around and getting new glasses, living my life in an out of focus, ash-grey world. I was a little bummed that I couldn’t see the ash clouds more clearly — it’s not exactly something that happens every day — but I did get to see some of the aftereffects as the cleanup got underway.
Just more of the oddball fun of life in Alaska, I suppose.
I recall Mt. Spurr quite clearly ;-) My mother and I went downtown to go shopping. It was 2 p.m. in the afternoon and a perfectly clear day. I remember my mother and I looking out the car window while driving towards downtown from South Anchorage and we saw this pinprick of a very dark cloud hanging over a mountain. We had no clue what it was. We finally heard what was going on via the radio and by the time our shopping trip was finished, sometime between 5 and 6 p.m., it was snowing black, gray ash. I tell you, it was very interesting making the normally 20 minute drive turned 80 minute drive home through that murk.
There were also some fires going on last summer in Siberia (I kid you not) where the smoke was catching a jet stream right over to Alaska. You could still smell the wood smell in the air for a few days until the wind changed…
I was sent home early from CHA due to the ash headed for us. We shut down our computers and covered them with sheets for several days. I got caught up on my filing! Even with that the computers were full of ash. We wore face masks in CHA to keep it out of our lungs. The ash was very gritty. Although I’d cleaned my windshield, there was still enough floating around to scratch it the next time I used the windshield wipers. Ash clogged everything. Air filters on cars needed to be changed and were a premium item for a while.
It piled up on the porch like snow, only gray. We saved some, but I don’t know where it is now. Probably in the garage!
I’ll confirm Stacy’s statement about the Siberian fires. It was overcast for a couple weeks from the smoke, and the smell was certainly wood-fire.
Don’t you miss Alaska?