Tag Archives: wildfires

Wednesday’s storms trigger few new wildfires in western Montana

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Lots of lightning Wednesday night, but not much action in western Montana . . .

Wednesday night’s lightning storm didn’t do as much damage as it appeared in western Montana, but eastern Idaho wilderness areas got pounded.

“The Clearwater (Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest) picked up 41 new starts,” said Bitterroot National Forest spokesman Tod McKay. “That’s where a lot of our smoke is coming from today.”

In contrast, U.S. Forest Service land in the Bitterroot Valley only recorded six new fires out of roughly 400 lightning strikes that hit over a five-hour period. Bitterroot crews and a helicopter also assisted Hamilton firefighters with a 200-acre grass fire off Sleeping Child Road that was declared out about midnight Wednesday.

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Wildfires in the Bob Marshall Wilderness area ease off

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Wildfire activity in northwest Montana has eased up over the past couple of days . . .

While activity on several fires in and around the Bob Marshall Wilderness has slowed over the last couple of days, one fire has showed signs of life.

After being detected Tuesday, the Bar Creek Fire grew to 70 acres and as of Thursday afternoon it was estimated at about 255 acres. The fire is burning in the southern part of the wilderness about 35 miles southeast of Condon.The fire is now being managed as part of the Elbow Pass Fire Complex, which involved three fires merging on the eastern part of the wilderness earlier this week.

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Fires in the Bob Marshall get bigger; fire danger now high in Flathead Forest

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The U.S. Forest Service is starting to get busy. They’ve now got a 3,000 acre blaze in the Bob, after a couple of fires merged, as well as several smaller actions elsewhere. According to the following article from the Daily Inter Lake, they did manage to suppress a small wildfire in the North Fork’s Coal Creek drainage yesterday. . .

A fire that rapidly expanded in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex has merged with another fire to the east to cover a total of 3,000 acres by Monday afternoon.

The Rapid Creek Fire first was sized up at less than acre at midday Sunday, but by the afternoon it had grown to 500 acres and by Monday morning it was estimated at 1,000 acres.

The fire is located on the east side of the wilderness about 27 miles west of Augusta. The fire has been churning through heavy, beetle-killed timber across the Flathead Forest’s boundary with the Lewis and Clark National Forest, where It burned into the 700-acre Elbow Pass Fire by Monday afternoon.

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Wildfire season arrives on the North Fork

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Well, the U.S. Forest Service had an incident team set up on Moran Meadow today, a short distance south of Polebridge. Reportedly, they were working with helicopter support (a shiny red one) to knock down a spot fire in the Coal Creek area. They appeared to be doing water drops.

So, it looks like its time to remind our loyal readership that this site has a Wildfire Information page, with links to a number of useful resources.

Also, the Daily Inter Lake, as in the past, is shaping up as the newspaper of record for wildfire news this year. You can read today’s report online, which centers on the situation in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Lightning sparks wildfires in Flathead National Forest

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This explains the increased low-flying air traffic yesterday . . .

A late-night storm on Sunday generated more than 100 lightning strikes in the Flathead National Forest and sparked seven small fires. On Monday, crews were working to suppress the fires and flying over the Spotted Bear Ranger District to get a better idea of what was burning.

According to the forest’s public affairs specialist, Wade Muehlhof, five of the fires are located within the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The Snow Peak Fire is the largest and had burned 8 acres of land as of Monday afternoon.

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Scientists sorting out relationship between beetles and other wildfire factors

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Researchers are putting a lot of effort into studying the relationship between beetle killed and damaged tress and wildfire intensity . . .

Inside university laboratories and government research facilities across the country, scientists are playing with dozens of variables — mixing and matching and rearranging — to gain a better understanding of what makes wildfire go.

They’re busy building computer models as firefighters toil on steep mountainsides to put out more than a dozen new blazes in what has already become a vicious summer of destruction.

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Western Montana OK so far, but wildfire risk is rising

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As temperatures rise and humidities drop, fire management officials are starting to get nervous abut fire conditions in Western Montana . . .

Western Montana seems to have misplaced its ticket to the bonfire season that’s torching the eastern half of the state, but fire officials remain braced for trouble over the Fourth of July week.

“We certainly came out of the chute pretty quick this year,” said Paula Short at the state Department of Natural Resources on Friday. “At least we’ve got all our large fires staffed with incident management teams now. With this early start, we’re expecting above-average temperatures and below-average humidity in the southeast and all along the bottom of the state.”

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Wolves, aspen, elk and fire

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Cristina Eisenberg gave a presentation on her research into the interrelationship between predators, prey and landscape May 2. The Hungry Horse news has an interesting write-up on this report . . .

There are things one knows to be true in the natural world of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. There are wolves, there are elk, elk are chased down and eaten by wolves, and elk do everything they can to avoid being eaten. It’s nature.

Add a wild card to the mix, like the huge wildfires that have grazed the landscape in the North Fork of the Flathead, and one sees something else — lush growth of new stands of aspen, a tree coveted not only for its aesthetics but as a food resource for elk.

Oregon state researcher and author Cristina Eisenberg has been studying the relationships between elk, aspens, wolves and fires for several years in the adjoining national parks. Over the years, she’s compared the density of elk and wolves in three different but similar regions — the North Fork, St. Mary and Waterton valleys. She talked about her findings at the Glacier National Park Community Hall on May 2.

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Al-Qaida magazine pushes terrorists to trigger Montana wildfires

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You just can’t make this stuff up.

A fumbling article in an English-language Al-Qaida publication is urging wanna-be terrorists to set wildfires in Montana. Here’s the write-up, including the obligatory tough-talking response from local law enforcement . . .

Terrorists who want to strike fear in the hearts of Americans would do well to set wildfires in Montana, al-Qaida advises in the most recent issue of its English-language magazine, Inspire.

“It is difficult to choose a better place other than in the valleys of Montana where the population increases rapidly,” Inspire’s “AQ Chef” columnist writes.

The magazine disappeared for a while after its founders, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, were killed last year in a U.S. missile strike.

But it recently reappeared online, its grammatically challenged cover urging “It is of your freedom to ignite a firebomb.” Inside, the AQ Chef gives three pages detailing the recipe for an “ember bomb” – along with the suggestion to deploy such bombs in Montana.

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Bonus: For extra-snarky commentary on this story, see the Huffington Post’s take on the subject.

Recent study shows beetle-killed pine needles burn 3 times faster than live needles

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That beetle-killed trees burn faster than live ones seems rather obvious, but it’s good that someone has come up with some hard numbers . . .

A recently study should put to rest the notion that green lodgepole pine needles burn as fast as red ones.

But more than that, Matt Jolly said, the study could help open firefighters’ eyes to the dangers lurking in mountain pine beetle-infested forests where the trees still look to be alive and doing well.

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