2012 Fire Season

[Jim]

Rebooting for the 2012 Fire season. Here comes the smoke, and we now what that means.












I must be blowing it?

[chumley]

Coconino NF fire restrictions were re-enacted today, June 4th at 8am.

Kaibab and Prescott NFs will have restrictions beginning Wednesday June 8th.

Coronado will consider closure at a Monday meeting. Apache half of ASNF is closed due to Wallow Fire. Sitgreaves half is open but under restrictions.

And it's only June 4th. There's still 2-3 weeks of heat and drying until some of the most damaging historic fires started ... and 4-6 weeks until we can count on moisture that will lower the threat.

A little history:
Rodeo-Chediski started June 18.
Willow started June 24.
Cave Creek Complex started June 21.
Aspen (Mt. Lemmon) started June 17.
Schultz started June 20.
Nuttall (Mt. Graham) started June 26.
Dude started June 26.

The next month could determine the future of how much of Arizona looks for the next 30+ years.

[Nighthiker]

When conditions were that bad they should have closed entry to people last week in May.

[azbackpackr]

When conditions were that bad they should have closed entry to people last week in May.

Amen. The Apache-Sitgreaves supervisor HAD NO BUSINESS lifting the campfire ban just before Memorial Day weekend. I heard thru the grapevine that he claims to have "not received a memo" sent to him by higherups. What a crock. He should lose his job.

[RedRoxx44]

Areas of Tucson getting a fair amount of smoke now due to the Murphy fire to the south. Very smokey toward the Santa Ritas, smaller fire in the Parajita Wilderness just south of the border is making a run to merge ( or has) with Murphy. They did save the Atascosa lookout ( one Ed Abbey had manned).

[Jim]

It was smokey all weekend down there. You could smell it pretty well above 5 to 6000', and you could barely see the Santa Ritas up higher, but could see them just fine down lower.

[azbackpackr]

You could smell it? I have a lousy sense of smell. I couldn't smell much of anything. Too dry.

[Jim]

You could smell it, but it wasn't overpowering, more of just a pleasant odor.

The Gila NF reported 7 new lightning fires from the weekend's dry, high base lightning storms. Last year, we had a fire called the Eagle Rock Fire over on Sitgreaves, and just a few days before the Schultz Fire. In 2009, the Taylor Fire was deemed to be lightning. There was another in the Kaibab that July which burned to it's predetermined boundary, but would have burned larger if it had been allowed to just go. Point is, these were all lightning caused fires that happened early enough to become wind driven fires, or would have been because of the dry monsoon that year. Before we grazed grass to nubs and then started putting everything out, large, wind blown fires would probably have been pretty common. Sure, it didn't look like a Disney forest, but fuel loads were more or less low. Not so today.

When we Prescribe burn, we have this cute myth that all fires were and therefore should be slow moving, easy to control, and fairly benign. When fuel loads are low, they might not be super intense as with the Wallow or the Schultz, but with spring's normally high winds, an early lightning fire, or one that happens in a dry monsoon year could easily have been a rapidly growing wind driven event. Add into the equation that humans have been in Arizona and the rest of the Continent for at least as long a the current vegetation zones have occupied the elevations that they do, and that man liked to use fire for a variety of reason, and you can see that simply saying lightning should be the only agent to start a fire in a wilderness area is about as useful as pretending a wilderness area will be just fine because it is designated as such, and that the affects of past management have no impact on the present and future condition of a wilderness. If we aren't going to thin, we need to burn more, we need to burn hotter in the non-fire seasons, and we need to get used to smoke being around when we can tolerate it, but not control it because that is arrogant. Otherwise, we'll have deal with it as we are, today.

[Jim]

The Hill Fire, reported late this afternoon, is a combination of seven to nine suspicious fires that began simultaneously in the Turkey Hills area, which is approximately 8 miles east of the center of Flagstaff and 2 miles north of Interstate 40. Acreage is currently unknown.

Four firefighting crews, 10 engines, and several water tenders are on scene. Five heavy air tankers have been ordered to respond.

Ecoterrorist? Arsonist? I was at home, and have multiple alibi. You know you were thinking it. Doubtful that is an escaped campfire, homeless or otherwise.

Anyway, at least it was east of town. I thought I saw smoke in the air this afternoon, but it looked to be really high up, so probably wasn't from this.

[azbackpackr]

I can one up you on that one. I reported the fire while driving my school bus along T-W Road. Oh, well. Have to be honest. I wasn't the first to report it. But there were no firefighters there when I did call. I didn't set it, though. I do have an alibi. It is 40 feet long and bright yellow, and full of obnoxious Donkey Park children.

[PaleoRob]

New fire outside of Sierra Vista. Small, but apparently some residents were evacuated. This via KPHO this evening.

[Jim]

I think it's the Monument, and not the Horseshoe 2, which I can see from east Tucson. It looked like a nice thunder head until I realized it was smoke. Putting up a large plume of smoke today out there.

[PaleoRob]

Yeah, I heard it described as the Monument fire this morning on the news.

[Jim]

Timing is interesting. I wish they would include more than just ponderous pine, such as mixed conifer, oak and pinyon-juniper.

[chumley]

As posted by nonot in the Willow Fire thread, additional closure of the Sitgreaves side of the A-S begins Thursday June 23. It basically covers the area south of Highway 260 to the edge of the Mogollon Rim from the AZ 260 junction with FR300 east of Forest Lakes toward the already closed areas on the Lakeside district. (Junction is NOT AZ 260/FR 300 at the Rim Lakes turnoff and visitor center. 10+ miles east of there)

North of Highway 260 is still OPEN. The Rim Road is still OPEN west of Forest Lakes. The Rim Lakes area is still OPEN (except temporarily Bear Canyon Lake area is closed due to the active Willow Fire).

Confused yet? Me too. Here are the closure maps.

[Tough_Boots]

I wonder if one of the HAZ gods will create a combined closure map for the homepage? ;)

[Jim]

The Coconino National Forest will expand campfire and smoking restrictions to include the entire national forest including developed campgrounds and recreation sites, effective Wednesday morning, June 22.

This restriction prohibits all fires, campfires, charcoal, coal and wood stoves and limits smoking to within enclosed vehicles or buildings. Pressurized liquid or gas stoves and lanterns meeting safety specifications will continue to be allowed. Approved stoves and lanterns include devices that can be turned off.

[Jim]

The above linked image (at this time) shows a few red spots for recent activity in the western Gila Wilderness, so these may be new starts, and since they are more recent than the last press release on the Gila NF Home Page, these may be lightning fires that they will manage for fire ecology. I hope so, becuase that area can benefit from some re-burn. These are worth monitoring.

Locally, there is as yet no activity on the Coconino NF Homepage, but there was a Coconino Twitter post yesterday (7/13) talking about the 10 acre "Bolt Fire" south of Flag between Munds Park and Lake Mary, near Antelope Park and FR 132. It was stated in the twitch that management options were being assessed. On Humphrey around 3 PM, I could see smoke down there. Not sure what, if anything this means, but I thought it was an area that was being pile burned as it was putting up a decent quantity of smoke. Smoke was visible from the near Basha's by the Hospital around 6 PM. It could be that the Coconino is hosting a fire for management purposes. I hope so.
http://twitter.com/#!/CoconinoNF
On the North Rim, smoke was visible on the western side of the Kaibab Plataea. I know nothing on that fire.

That is all.

[Jim]

Bolt is >62 acres and is being managed.

and there are a few medium sized fires in the western Gila Wilderness, but it looks like they're violating the letter and spirit of the Wilderness act. However the Press Release makes it seem like they might let these burn a little, so who knows.

[Dschur]

My sister is working at Silver City dispatching planes to NM for firefighting... She posted that just on Saturday alone there were over 16 fires started in the Gila due to lightning.... Don't know how they have done since then...

[Jim]

More recent view. Probably at least 1000 acres of treated area, but not continuous acreage.