MANCHESTER, N.J. -- Firefighters in New Jersey were confronted by 200-foot (60-meter) flames as they battled a wildfire tearing through 6 square miles of the state’s Pine Barrens, raining down embers and prompting evacuations but leaving no one injured and property intact, officials said Wednesday.
The blaze in Manchester, near Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, forced the evacuation of around 170 homes late Tuesday, with police and fire officials going door-to-door to ask people to take temporary shelter at a nearby high school. Helicopters were filling large containers with water from a nearby lake Wednesday and dropping it on the flames.
Sad that it's burning the Pine Barrens.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
AndyinPA wrote: ↑Tue Apr 11, 2023 8:34 pm
Twelve counties in SW PA are under fire alerts. Super, super rare. It's not that we are at low water levels; it's that we haven't had much rain in the last few weeks.
This ended up being the only time in my lifetime that we never had to shovel snow the entire winter. It was rainy, though, but you don't have to shovel that.
Yeah, here in Michigan we had a "Fire Weather Watch." Dr. Vicklund and I looked at each other and asked if we heard Alexa correctly.
Substantial downpours have inundated Fort Lauderdale and parts of South Florida Wednesday night in a once-in-a-half-century rainfall event, leading to a flash flood emergency in Broward County and one mayor calling the deluge the “most severe flooding that I’ve ever seen.”
Around 10 to 14 inches of rain have fallen across the area Wednesday and an additional two to four inches are possible as heavy thunderstorms continue to move slowly across the area.
Fort Lauderdale “is experiencing severe flooding in multiple areas of the city,” Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue said on social media, warning to stay off the roads as vehicles may become stuck or submerged.
A flash flood emergency – the highest level of flood warning – has been issued for portions of South Florida, including Fort Lauderdale, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) in Miami Wednesday night.
More at the link above. There are videos on Twitter of the street flooding.
Tim Walz’ Golden Rule: Mind your own damn business!
Floods tore through California crops – now small immigrant farmers face destitution Government aid programs, set up to favor corporate farms, are out of reach to those who supply farmers markets and restaurants
Maanvi Singh in Hollister, California
Tue 18 Apr 2023 11.00 BST
The water came in a rush – tearing through planted rows of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower before crashing into the tractors and farm equipment. Within hours, much of María Inés Catalán’s 41-acre (17-hectare) organic farm in Hollister, California, had disappeared under several feet of water.
She had escaped just in time, as the flood waters gurgled into her trailer home. Now, three months after a series of storms, Catalán and her family are still counting their losses. Their dog, Flor, didn’t make it, nor did the bees that Catalán had been tending for two years.
The farm’s entire spring harvest – including the peas, beans and beets that she sells to James Beard-awarded restaurants in San Francisco and sends to food pantries across central California – was destroyed as well. “Everything went to waste. Everything was spoiled,” she said.
Frantic calls and emails to the US Department of Agriculture and state agencies have so far gone unanswered. A fundraising campaign has helped Catalán pay for immediate repairs, but she doesn’t have enough to cover the land lease. “This is a tough business. Us small farmers, we develop a callus for losses, and I’ve lost before,” she said, “but this time I’ve lost everything.”
Goldurnit, my swimmin' pool is open. It was open yesterday. I could be swimming and baking in the Sun like a lizard. But not in 60° weather and pouring rain.
I'm Foggy and I forget if I approved this message.
The smoky scenes and threat of fast-moving fires — so common in California during recent summers — are now paying the eastern United States an unwelcome, improbable and toxic visit.
A thick veil of Canadian wildfire smoke is spreading south over much of the Midwest, Ohio Valley, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, bringing milky-white skies and dangerous air pollution to the most populous corridor of the country. Fine particles contained within the smoke, hazardous to breathe, have prompted air quality alerts for tens of millions of people from Baltimore to Boston to Burlington, but measurements show bad air affecting even a larger area that includes Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
Smoke invaded the D.C. area yet again Tuesday and could get worse
In some places, air quality measurements are the worst on record. Marshall Burke, a professor of environment at Stanford University, tweeted that this event is the “[n]ear worst or worst event” in the last two decades or so, based on smoke particle data.
As of Tuesday afternoon, New York City and Toronto were ranked among the seven cities with the worst air quality in the world.
In Pennsylvania, it's very bad in the eastern part, very little in the mountains in the middle of the state, and then gets bad in this area, Western PA.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
Code red alert in all of Pennsylvania today, predicted to only get worse. I was supposed to go out today, downtown to an arts festival. I have mild respiratory problems, so that's not happening. I was really looking forward to getting out today, getting a day to take a break from all the other stuff going on.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
AndyinPA wrote: ↑Wed Jun 07, 2023 1:16 pm
Code red alert in all of Pennsylvania today, predicted to only get worse. I was supposed to go out today, downtown to an arts festival. I have mild respiratory problems, so that's not happening. I was really looking forward to getting out today, getting a day to take a break from all the other stuff going on.
This is when an N95 mask is your friend. However, since you're not trying to protect others from your own breath, use an N95 respirator mask which allows your breath to be released. Painters, for example, use these masks. Check your local hardware store.
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Tim Walz’ Golden Rule: Mind your own damn business!
In some places, air quality measurements are the worst on record. Marshall Burke, a professor of environment at Stanford University, tweeted that this event is the “[n]ear worst or worst event” in the last two decades or so, based on smoke particle data.
As of Tuesday afternoon, New York City and Toronto were ranked among the seven cities with the worst air quality in the world.
In Pennsylvania, it's very bad in the eastern part, very little in the mountains in the middle of the state, and then gets bad in this area, Western PA.
Here in SW Connecticut, there is significant visible haze when I look across the lake to the other shore, approximately 0.5 miles away. There's a definite burning smell. And the sun this morning was approximately as bright as a full moon, shining through the muck as a faded pinkish orb -- it was no problem to stare directly at the sun for 15 seconds yesterday.
The air quality and the smell is very reminiscent of the massive fires that burned in the Los Angeles foothills leading up to the Angeles National Forest when I was a kid. Those fires were only 1-2 miles away from my house and we could see the flames when my parents drove me to school. So the fires in Canada must be truly apocalyptic in scope.
I don't recall seeing as much national coverage for NY and vicinity when we had the air quality issues in greater Pacific Northwest due to smoke a few years ago, but I hear your pain, it's nasty. Right now the skies they're showing on air are bright orange.
I suspect air conditioning is more prevalent in the east vs. older homes in the NW, but I can recommend getting a good air purifier (especially if it lets you know what the indoor air quality is). They can help. I had left a window open during our smoke issues and woke up to see the purifier air quality alert at red. Shut the window and it wasn't long before it cleared things out and quality level was much reduced.
This is the same thing Singapore gets every 2~3 years as Indonesia (and Malaysia, sometimes) clear fields for palm oil plantations. PSI readings got as high as 401 in 2013 (typical is under 50, and anything over 300 is hazardous). It looks like the AQI readings around the New York area are in the 380-400 range, so I can imagine just how bad it is
(AQI and PSI are different, but somewhat comparable),
I have never seen haze this thick on the North Fork without fog being involved.
Traffic on Main Rd to the west of us was very heavy today when we went to the optician. Don't know why. Schools still open here so many summer folks are not here yet.
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
The US experienced its worst toxic air pollution from wildfire smoke in its recent recorded history on Wednesday, researchers have found, with people in New York exposed to levels of pollution more than five times above the national air quality standard.
The rapid analysis of the extreme event, shared with the Guardian, found that smoke billowing south from forest fires in Canada caused Americans to suffer the worst day of average exposure to such pollution since a dataset on smoky conditions started in 2006.
“It’s the worst by far, I mean, Jesus, it was bad,” said Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University who led the work. “It’s hard to believe to be honest, we had to quadruple check it to see if it was right. We have not seen events like this, or even close to this, on the east coast before. This is a historic event.”
The Stanford researchers calculated that the average American on Wednesday was exposed to 27.5 micrograms per cubic meter of small particulate matter carried within the plumes of smoke. These tiny flecks of soot, dust and other burned debris, known as PM2.5, bury deep in the lungs when inhaled and are linked to a variety of health conditions and can cause deaths.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
Here in Northern New England the we have actually avoided the smoke so far, even though the Canadian fires (particularly those in Quebec and Nova Scotia) are fairly close as the choking crow flies. Reason? There’s been a low pressure area parked on top of us for a week. It’s been cloudy, cold, and rainy day after day.
Also keeps the tourists at bay.
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Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness.
—Theodore Roosevelt
"Hey! We left this England place because it was bogus, and if we don't get some cool rules ourselves, pronto, we'll just be bogus too!" -- Thomas Jefferson
Here, too. I think I read or heard somewhere that this has affected about a hundred million people, which is almost a third of the population.
And also Hi, W4.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
In late March, a dear old friend, who is 81 and lived on a sail boat, moved up here to NW Ohio. He is my housemate now and I think it was going to be mutually beneficial. I enjoy that he is here, but he has the worst COPD I have ever seen. He's been to ER twice in the past ten days. It's horrible to see him not even be able to walk five feet without having to sit down and recover for ten minutes. The docs told him don't go outside and get some heppa filters for his new a/c.
Skipping back, he came the end of March. We had a rainy, snowy, cold and miserable Spring. Then, the pollen. Now this. I feel so badly for folks who are dealing with breathing.
Philly Boondoggle
