The fire situation near Ukiah appears to be holding steady with nothing new to report. The skies over Ukiah valley are clearing. Let’s hope it remains that way and that we see full containment soon.

Also, the word is that CalFire has been doing some controlled burns… while they’ve got the staff on hand. (See Glenmaple journal in sidebar for details.) I’m seeing those blips pop up on the satellite.

County-wide, CalFire now puts it at 40% containment. So, elsewhere in Mendocino county, fires are far from under control. Cold Springs toward the west (between Boonville and Manchester) is better, but still has serious problems. I have a feeling we lost many trees there. Also, further to the north, above Leggett, there’s some new activity.

And then there’s Yolla Bolly, the incredibly beautiful wilderness area at the north end of the Mendocino National Forest, which is out of control. Last I read from the park service, the smoke was so bad that fire crews couldn’t even hike into the interior. And, because the fires to the north in Shasta and Trinity counties are so serious, there are not enough resources to spare for Y.B. (BTW, my other favorite wilderness area, the Trinity Alps, also has multiple fires.)

To help fight some of these inaccessible high mountain fires, Mendocino OES reports that a modified DC 10 air tanker, capable of carrying 12,000 gallons of fire retardant, has been ordered to assist, and is expected to arrive soon.

See 10 Tanker for full details.

I’ve heard of this amazing super-air-tanker, but I’ve never seen it before. I hope it can do the job, but I wonder where it will land around here? (Ukiah airport runway is not long enough.) Sacramento?

In addition…

Mendocino OES has just released this Mendocino Fire Status information sheet (as of July 1, 2008, 4PM) about the current fires. Listed by location it provides the size of the fire, current threat level, and degree of containment.

Here’s the info for the immediate Ukiah area (out of the 37,000 acres total):

Fire Name	Area	Acres	Current Threat to Residences	Containment
Orr Springs Series	Orr Hot Springs	3,374	High	Moderate
Jack Smith	Greenfield	1,538	High	Substantial
Indian	Parlin Fork	1,127	Moderate	Moderate
McCarvey 2/Low Gap	10 mi. West of Ukiah	1,279	Moderate	Moderate

(If you don’t see your area listed, click the above link for other fire areas.)

Here’s the fire map, as labeled for the above table:

The full map download can be found here: CalFire Mendocino 2008 firemap

The wind is gusting again as it does normally in the afternoons in Ukiah. The thermal satellite is indicating two new fires in the Low Gap and Orr areas. It has been reported by Glenmaple that these are control burns done by CalFire.

We’ll continue to monitor it and update here again tonight.

I noticed a flaw in WordPress (this blog system) that required me to change my layout (theme)…

Due to the theme (styles and colors) I was using, for a specific blog post page, you would not see links in the sidebar to my other blog postings. For example, if you found one of my postings via Google, it may not be apparent that there were other related postings. Several people were just seeing a single posting, not the entire blog.

Sorry about that. I changed to a theme that does provide the sidebar for archived entries.

I must admit, I like WordPress, but was surprised it had this defect. It seems that the theme determines the layout of not only the primary page, but of the sub-pages, but only the widgets of the primary page can be modified via the admin controls.

Well, it’s ok… I like this layout theme better anyway.

Although it is quite smoky this morning in the Ukiah and Redwood Valley areas, it appears that we had no significant growth in perimeters for fires near Ukiah. Although there is no official announcement yet, let’s hope that at least these local fires are contained.

Judging by a fairly clear sunset last night (looking west toward Orr Springs from Caplella area), and by the smoke patterns early this morning, I think a good portion of this smoke is drifting down from further north, perhaps Soda Complex (Lake Pillsbury), Covelo, or Mendocino National Forest.

(Also, I’ve noted that the smell of the smoke this morning has changed. When the fires were more local, the smoke smelled more like burning grass and wood. Now it’s more a ashy smell, less identifiable.)

Here is the current fire map for southern Mendocino areas around Ukiah:

The yellow areas are the fire perimeters. As long as we don’t see any red spots or red zones in or around those, then things are looking good.

The state (CalFire) has also finally published a useful Mendocino 2008 firemap. However, it can be slow to download (the full PDF) so here’s the part relevant to southern Mendocino:

Thanks to a message from Margo with a link to Glenmaple, we now have this detailed fire map of the Orr Springs and Montgomery areas:

On the upper right side, you can see Orr Springs Resort which according to comments posted here the fire came to within 50 feet (click on comments for info). And, along the top you can see Montgomery Woods primary Redwood grove (the tallest trees in the world) looks ok.

For several more detailed fire maps, amazing photos, and written accounts from the fire lines (and also the Jack Smith-Singley/Greenfield Ranch) see the Glenmaple website.

Also, here is another good source of blogged information for people in the Greenfield Ranch fire area.

It’s noon on Monday, and it looks like not much is new regarding fires in the Ukiah areas, including Orr Springs, Montgomery Woods, Reeves Canyon, and Low Gap road. So, again, no news is good news, right?

To the north, there are a few new fires — what were probably sleepers hidden in the smoke from other fires. Around Lake Pillsbury it looks like some new fire growth around Big Signal Peak and Bald Mountain. Multiple fires still surround Covelo, some of which are new, and a bit more in Rockport and Leggett areas.

And further to the northeast, sadly, a monster fire has exploded in the Yolla Bolly Mountains, a primary part of the Mendocino National Forest. This is an extremely remote, hard-to-access area — a federal wilderness area, pristine and amazingly beautiful, for hiking/backpacking recreation. (Here’s a short overview of Yolla Bolly on Wilderness.net)

Actually, I’m not sure they actually fight fires in these federal wilderness areas. Probably not. Certainly, from what I see on sat images, it looks like this one is just going to burn. Too bad. I was considering a backpack trip up there later this summer.

So, while things in Mendocino county area seem to be stable and containment is underway…

Acres Burned:	37,200
Containment:	38% contained

the numbers for California state grow worse, with 1459 fires with more than 19,000 people fighting them:

Total Fires: 1,459

Total Acres Burned: 379,115

Personnel Committed: 19,240

Fire Engines: 1,429

Hand Crews: 491

Dozers: 365

Water Tenders: 413

Helicopters: 94

Sunday morning, everything was looking good. Fortunately, the NOAA predicted thunderstorm never appeared, although the wind did shift to blow from the south, and that cleared the air in Ukiah valley.

There was still quite a bit of smoke to the north, trapped along the mountains of Redwood valley. (I live on a hill where I can see both Ukiah and Redwood valleys really well.)

Normal view to the northwest, looking toward Redwood Valley.

The R.V. smoked looked like it was coming from a few Reeves Canyon fires, and perhaps the Orr fire too. But I could finally see the mountain tops out that way, so I figured the situation had improved immensely.

About noon on Sunday, I checked the satellite data and all looked really good. There appeared to be no new fires or expanded fire perimeters. There was so little difference, it wasn’t even worth rebuilding the maps. I breathed a sigh of relief; finally it seemed like it was over.

(Although… I should mention there was an oddity with the CalFire “acres burned” estimate which had jumped to 35,000 acres overnight. I figured they must have recomputed their acreage assessment more accurately. It’s not so easy to compute those numbers.)

Unfortunately, later Sunday afternoon, our reliable trade wind from the northwest (comes off the Pacific) picked up again… and I sadly watched what looked like a wall of thick smoke roll rapidly back across the Ukiah Valley, from west to east. I thought, “oh no, here we go again.” (Well, those were probably not my exact thoughts.)

And that was Sunday.

There are now more than 1000 personnel fighting the Mendocino fires.

The fires continue to spread although much slower now than earlier in the week (due to the wind direction change). The fires added about 1500 acres since yesterday, according to CalFire reports. Also, Governor Schwarzenegger declared a official state of emergency for Mendocino county. But, I think we were already expecting that.

Unfortunately, some of those new acres are from expanded perimeters in the Orr Springs and Greenfield Ranch locations, and evacuation of those areas has been ordered. (See MC OES link in sidebar for official alert.)

If anyone knows for sure the current status of Orr Springs Resort, many folks want to know. Please post a comment. Thanks.

Here is an updated map of the area to the west of Ukiah (ranging about 14 miles to the west).

Further north, the good news is that the Humboldt county fires have been contained. Also, due to the wind direction change, the smoke has decreased in Ukiah and surrounding valleys.

Of course, the bad news is that Mendocino fires are still only 5% contained. Dense forests, very large trees (some more than 300 ft tall), and steep mountain terrain make these fires very difficult to control or contain.

The extent of the fires now has CalFire issuing its own special status page for Mendocino county.

Looking over various sources of information, I don’t find much new to report today about the southern Mendocino fires. So, no news is good news.

Although the wind has reversed and is now blowing from the south (at about 10 MPH), it was fairly calm last night and that kept the fires from spreading as fast as previous days. CalFire reported only 2000 new acres which is only about a third of what we were adding in prior days.

We will have to see what other effects this south wind will have. It’s still too early to know for sure.

Also, we were out cutting grass, clearing trees today and also trimming the dead “fronds” on some palm trees, ironically (try that for fun, sharp thorns!)  Although the fires are a few miles away, we’re just doing everything possible to be prepared. And wow, was it hot and humid, plus the smoke was horrible. (Now, imagine how the firefighters deal with it.)

No air tankers

Normally, the afternoon wind blows through Ukiah from the northwest. This was a good thing over the last few days because there are only a few “smaller fires” upwind, Orr Springs and Reeves Canyon mainly. Beyond that it’s the clean air of the Pacific Ocean.

This afternoon, June 26, the wind has shifted, and it is now coming from the northeast. This shift is pulling smoke from the much larger fires burning around Lake Pillsbury and in the Mendocino National Forest (more than 50 fires in that area). As a result, the air quality is horrible, with less than 1/2 mile visibility at our location north of Ukiah valley (near Calpella).

Personally, I’ve had to abandon my office because its AC filter is not good enough to remove the smoke. We’re also picking up a few additional air filters for the house, because I’ve noticed the current ones are clogging up with soot.

Fortunately, I believe this is a temporary situation because a weather front is approaching, and that will shift the wind direction. Here, it rarely blows here from the NE so my guess is that by later tonight we will see the wind shift, and I hope it’s from a better direction. Of course, with fires are burning in nearly all directions,  it’s probably not going to be a huge difference in air quality. But, we’ll take any improvement we can get.

It’s also difficult to know what affect the wind shift will have on the Mendocino fires themselves. Sometimes it is possible for the wind to blow fires back into their prior “burns” and with much of the fuel already gone, this can help to put them out. Of course, the wind can also blow the fires into entirely new directions, which is very problematic for firefighters who are trying to predict the fire’s direction and where best to direct their limited resources.

Of course, we’ll need to see what type of weather this next storm brings. It’s supposed to be another thunderstorm, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

BTW, all this smoke has created a problem for the local air tankers (fire bombers) that fly out of Ukiah. I noticed yesterday and today that there was no air traffic over Ukiah. The problem of course is visibility at Ukiah airport. CalFire tankers require three miles visibility for landing and takeoff. That’s restriction is fully understandable considering that their approach is directly over the city of Ukiah. There’s no room for error.

Here’s a UDJ story about the Air tankers being grounded.