Fire

26 June 2012
8:13 PM

Sunset at 12:45 AM in direction 344° North-northwest
Sunrise at 3:03 AM in direction 16° North-northeast

Civil Twilight all day

Each year hundred-thousands of acres burn in Alaska.  I just looked at statistics for numbers of acres burned in May: Fire Activity in May - 2000 - 2010.  I have posted photos of what it looks like in May.  It starts out bare limbed from break up and then leafs out.  The bogs are filling with water instead of ice; the wildflowers are nudging up leaves; the new grass is pushing aside last year's fodder.  Spring has barely hit the Interior and we are moving toward summer, but not nearly there.

The numbers graphed were for number of fires and acres burned.  The lowest number of acres burned - in May only, remember - were just under 100,000 for 2003 and @ 1.1 million for the highest number of fires in 2011.  I read this morning that the High Park Fire in Colorado had consumed over 83,000 acres and over 280 homes.  For Colorado, that fire represents a disaster of gigantic proportions, representing a sizable portion of the total acreage of the state.  It is on a par with the number of acres reached in May, 2003, the easiest fire season of the decade in Alaska.  The following year, a total of 6.523 million acres burned in the state.

My mind has no way to make sense of that information that I've just shared with you.  But practically, I can tell you there are days in the summer when I don't want to leave the house and go into the office where the ventilation systems bring in air from the outside to mix with water cooling devices.  The air is not fresh or clean, but laden with smoke.  The haze across the flag quad is so thick, it compares with the really, really bad smog days I remember in Los Angeles from my youth - before emissions restrictions began to mitigate the stench and filth somewhat.  Staying home I can close the windows and although stuffy, it remains breathable.

The fire in the photos was one of 14 that resulted from lightning strikes near Healy, Alaska on the north slope of the Alaskan Range.  I took them from points along the highway as I traveled along the arm of the final ridge of the mountains before reaching the Nenana and Tanana River Flats.