Entry tags:
Climate Change and Canada Burning.
I've been anxious about climate change for a long time, but just like everyone else, I thought we had more time to organize our response. I also thought, in a slightly joking way, that as the climate warmed, Canadians could just move North to the cooler parts of our usually frozen country. I thought it was unfortunate that trees and stuff couldn't move fast enough to get to the cooler areas, but I certainly thought the cooler areas would be there.
Hah.
As I showed in the previous entry:
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:2023-08-21..2023-08-22,2023-08-21;[Bad username or site: -83 @ 1],42.8,4.0z
all of Canada is burning. We are rapidly reaching a state where the evacuees have no place to evacuate to.
This past week we experienced some of the drama of the fires. Truly, we have been safe the whole time, but uncertainty has been our companion. We had a close family friend visiting Salmon Arm during the past week. One of the plans was to travel down ("down" map) to Penticton to visit another friend and then put our visitor on the plane in Kelowna on Sunday.
Well. First of all, the night before we were to leave, the McDougal fire to the west of Kelowna and Westbank (now called West Kelowna in a brilliantly original name change), went absolutely ballistic. It travelled up and over the mountain eastward to the homes along the lake, and then embers blew eastward across the lake to the hills westward of Winfield (now brilliantly known as Lake Country), then the new fire travelled up and over the hill towards the Kelowna airport (just past Rutland). This all happened between the evening of Thursday and the morning of Friday. The airport was closed, and the road was restricted to local traffic only.
We cancelled our trip to Penticton, and our visitor changed his flight to leave out of Kamloops ("up" map) on Sunday. Then between Friday morning and Friday night, the Adam's Lake fire went ballistic. Two fires merged near the mouth of the Adams river and then raced eastward along the shore of Shuswap Lake, and at the same time raced southward through Squilax and jumped across the lake to Sorrento, raced southward up the hill towards Notch Hill, and then jumped from peak to peak to Black Mountain and started down the hill eastwards towards Tappen. The Fire Service said the fire travelled 20 kilometers in 12 hours.
This caused the TransCanada Highway ("Number One") to be closed to all traffic at Sorrento, which meant that the regular route to Kamloops was not available. Considering that things were changing by the minute, Mom and our visitor left Saturday morning to travel by the Falkland route to Kamloops (through Silver Creek and other back roads - an extra hour to two hours). Mom said the road was packed. They spent the night in Kamloops and our visitor made his flight on Sunday morning. We have since had confirmation that he made it home. *whew*
Both fires have continued to be held at these locations, but we certainly couldn't know that they would be while everything was so fluid.
During all this the smoke has been hostile.
Sunday/Monday the remnants of Hurricane Hillary made it up here, but it was mostly lightning and very little rain. It has really been the smoke that has shielded us from the heat of the sun, which makes the temperatures better for fire fighting, but worse for visibility, so no water bombing. We have several new fires from lightning strikes.
Hah.
As I showed in the previous entry:
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:2023-08-21..2023-08-22,2023-08-21;[Bad username or site: -83 @ 1],42.8,4.0z
all of Canada is burning. We are rapidly reaching a state where the evacuees have no place to evacuate to.
This past week we experienced some of the drama of the fires. Truly, we have been safe the whole time, but uncertainty has been our companion. We had a close family friend visiting Salmon Arm during the past week. One of the plans was to travel down ("down" map) to Penticton to visit another friend and then put our visitor on the plane in Kelowna on Sunday.
Well. First of all, the night before we were to leave, the McDougal fire to the west of Kelowna and Westbank (now called West Kelowna in a brilliantly original name change), went absolutely ballistic. It travelled up and over the mountain eastward to the homes along the lake, and then embers blew eastward across the lake to the hills westward of Winfield (now brilliantly known as Lake Country), then the new fire travelled up and over the hill towards the Kelowna airport (just past Rutland). This all happened between the evening of Thursday and the morning of Friday. The airport was closed, and the road was restricted to local traffic only.
We cancelled our trip to Penticton, and our visitor changed his flight to leave out of Kamloops ("up" map) on Sunday. Then between Friday morning and Friday night, the Adam's Lake fire went ballistic. Two fires merged near the mouth of the Adams river and then raced eastward along the shore of Shuswap Lake, and at the same time raced southward through Squilax and jumped across the lake to Sorrento, raced southward up the hill towards Notch Hill, and then jumped from peak to peak to Black Mountain and started down the hill eastwards towards Tappen. The Fire Service said the fire travelled 20 kilometers in 12 hours.
This caused the TransCanada Highway ("Number One") to be closed to all traffic at Sorrento, which meant that the regular route to Kamloops was not available. Considering that things were changing by the minute, Mom and our visitor left Saturday morning to travel by the Falkland route to Kamloops (through Silver Creek and other back roads - an extra hour to two hours). Mom said the road was packed. They spent the night in Kamloops and our visitor made his flight on Sunday morning. We have since had confirmation that he made it home. *whew*
Both fires have continued to be held at these locations, but we certainly couldn't know that they would be while everything was so fluid.
During all this the smoke has been hostile.
Sunday/Monday the remnants of Hurricane Hillary made it up here, but it was mostly lightning and very little rain. It has really been the smoke that has shielded us from the heat of the sun, which makes the temperatures better for fire fighting, but worse for visibility, so no water bombing. We have several new fires from lightning strikes.
![[profile]](https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;<span lj:user='_100' style='white-space: nowrap;' class='ljuser'><a href='https://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=_100'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=_100'><b>_100</b></a></span>,40.0,4.0z){kind=small}