January fires in Oregon

[Scott S]

We have had a crew fighting slash burn rekindles for the last two days just east of Salem Oregon. The small slash fires were set last November and blazed back up due to 30 mph east winds and 16 humidity. There is a 120 + man crew fighting a nearly 250 acre fire just east of Silverton, OR this evening.

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20140125/NEWS/301250018/Dry-conditions-drive-several-fires

All of these areas would normally be under 3+ feet of snow, it's been a crazy weather year.

Scott S

 

[catman13]

we had a total of 4 fires burning in western Oregon on Friday.
we are way short on rain and snow between 40 to 80 percent in most places

 

[dirty4fun]

Guess I should move back there, in 95 when I moved there that winter was record rain and lots of snow.

 

[hoechucker]

We're under red flag warnings down this way too.I heard about a small fire that started sometime Friday morning or Thursday night.and fire crews just put out an almost 400 acre fire that is in a place that's normally covered in snow here. All our yarders sides are still dragging around all the fire tools and such. Very low humidity

 

[WFP1561]

BC coast also having unusual dry conditions.
WFP starting up operations in areas early that would normally be under 10ft of snow.

 

[loggers son]

I know its our fire season but its a bad year for fires down under as well, with extreme conditions here. The local yarder contractor just lost seven machines in a fire, including his tower. His brother working much further south lost 4 also, with another contractor losing 3 .
fires were started by lightning strikes. Its rare for any machines to be lost at all.

 

[dirty4fun]

Ouch, That would hurt to loose that many machines, take a while to replace some of them, I bet.

 

[245dlc]

Wow that's nuts my brother lives in Kelowna, BC and he said they don't have much snow in the mountains either yet here on the eastern Prairies we've got quite a bit at least on the east side of the Red River and temperatures going down to -30 C with a -40 C windchill and nothing but blizzard after blizzard.

 

[loggers son]

Had heard the yarder contractor is thinking of going to straight shovel operations

 

[WFP1561]

Shovel logging is the trend half the cost of running yarders.
Even in old growth stands if the ground is less than 60% the company will use chuckers.

 

[WFP1561]

Yeah even our local ski mountain Mt.washington had a 260cm base this time last year this year there is only 80cm.