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Today the smoke from the nearby Lionshead wildfire is really bad. Visibility is only about 1/2 mile. Like a heavy fog. A strong wind came up this afternoon and is blow the smoke. I imagine the fires are getting much larger. Lionshead has been burning for 3 weeks now and was about 15,000 acres before this 15-30 mph wind came today. Wonder how big it will be tomorrow.
I think this strong wind is also bring smoke from the 75,000 acre Evans Canyon fire up in Washington.

RZehr wrote:Today the smoke from the nearby Lionshead wildfire is really bad. Visibility is only about 1/2 mile. Like a heavy fog. A strong wind came up this afternoon and is blow the smoke. I imagine the fires are getting much larger. Lionshead has been burning for 3 weeks now and was about 15,000 acres before this 15-30 mph wind came today. Wonder how big it will be tomorrow.
I think this strong wind is also bring smoke from the 75,000 acre Evans Canyon fire up in Washington.

Here in the Portland area we are being hammered with thick pea smoke and high winds. Smoke is so think I could barely make it to the mailbox and back. I don't know how anyone is working outdoors without a respirator. With these high winds I expect trees to come down around here. They catch a lot more wind in these summer storms with full leaves than in the winter when they are bare. There are also fires on Mt. Hood and central WA. I'm not sure where all our smoke is coming from.

I was working outside this morning and a couple hours late this afternoon. I think it affected my eyes and lungs. It is terrible. You might be getting the Evans Canyon smoke too.

https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/information/firemap.aspx

Prayers for all those suffering from the fires and in harm's way.

https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate ... e946d.html
https://www.foxnews.com/us/washington-w ... re-weather
https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2020/ ... -come.html
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09 ... tages.html

We have clear sky's here in Central Oregon today, thanks to favorable winds. However there is heavy smoke in other parts of the PNW. That fire pushed by the strong wind destroyed one small town in WA. Power is being cut through certain high risk forest as a safety precaution.

RZehr wrote:https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate ... e946d.html
https://www.foxnews.com/us/washington-w ... re-weather
https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2020/ ... -come.html
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09 ... tages.html

We have clear sky's here in Central Oregon today, thanks to favorable winds. However there is heavy smoke in other parts of the PNW. That fire pushed by the strong wind destroyed one small town in WA. Power is being cut through certain high risk forest as a safety precaution.

Our skies here in the Portland area cleared up over the night also. But we have lots of scattered power outages due to downed trees and powerlines. Apparently parts of eastern Marion County (Salem area) is being evacuated up in the west slopes of the Cascades around Detroit Lake due to fires there.

Looks like we escaped the worst of it so far. Compared to 2017 (or 2018?) when we had smoke for over two weeks and they had to cancel the first week of fall sports and keep everyone indoors when most of the gorge was on fire.

We had smoke up into the 400s yesterday evening, and a town near my parents peaked above 500 on the pollution scale (which technically caps at 500) my parents are under a get ready phase of evacuation. We are just getting tons of smoke here.

Whole town of Mill City (east of Salem OR) is now going up in flames.

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There is a Holdeman church not far from there in Scio and a Mennonite church in the next valley down in Sweet Home. Silver Creek Falls State Park is also on fire for those who know the area. It's getting really bad really fast and racing west into the more populated areas.

I have friends that have had to evacuate. Co-workers who live in Sweet Home headed home to do what ever they have to. The Beachie Creek Fire is blowing up. Yesterday at 8pm it was about 500 or so acres, now less than 24 hours later, the latest size is 132,000 acres. The wind is crazy. The Lionshead is now 27,000 acres. White River Fire is 17,000 acres. Up in Central Washington the Cold Springs Fire is 162,000 and looks about to merge with the Pearl Hill Fire at 174,000.
Community of Blue River is burnt from the Holiday Farm Fire.

There are at least a half a dozen Oregon towns on the west slope of the Cascades that have been burnt completely to the ground in the past 24 hours. A whole new fire east of Eugene called the Holiday Farm fire has exploded up to over 100,000 acres in less than 24 hours and taken out several small towns.

Oregon and Washington have had a lot of devastating fires in the past. Like the Yacolt Burn, for example, which was the most epic of all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacolt_Burn But I don't remember any recent years when fires have exploded in size so fast and taken out so many mountain towns so quickly.

My parents in the Salem area say that the State Fairgrounds is now full of fire refugees and rescued animals because all the surrounding hotels and motels are full.