Hopefully no one suffers any measurable property damage, but fires aren't necessarily a bad thing for the forests.
Yea, I drove home through Guntersville yesterday and you could see the smoke hanging over the lake like fog. Crazy.
It sucks for loss of any houses and danger to people but for the forest it's a good thing. Clears out the little growth and allows the big stuff to flourish. Mother nature had a great cycle of it going before humans
seems to be inspirational as well: " Aspiring Weatherman Arrested on Arson Charges After Admitting to Starting Fire to Gain Facebook Views" https://weather.com/news/news/southeast-wildfires
I was assuming they were started by lightning, wrong. Many by arson, WTF is the thrill of setting the woods on fire ?
One small file in the metro area was caused by a hawk that got fried by power lines. No smoke smell today, but on Friday I could smell it from the southern side of Meriwether County.
I know the complete mountian down near rising fawn (exit 4) in ga, on 59, was engulfed in flames thursday night. From top to bottom about a mile long stretch was burning. Came back from barber last night, and visibility was less than a 1/4 mile, and apparently it had rained and that particular fire was out. The smoldering smoke was very intense and honestly hardto breath.
The Lake Lure fire has been devastating (that's where the lake portions of Dirty Dancing movie were filmed). I'm thinking that those folks' tourism is going to suffer for years. We worked Saturday and Sunday and the South Mountains State Park fire had us gagging and coughing all day....made us all feel like we had a bad cold. I've listened to grumbling from some fire fighters who've said that this fire could have been quickly dealt with, but the wheels at the State Park refused help for days until it was beyond their abilities.
Knoxville is smelling pretty smoky and has a hazy foggy look. Went up I-75 yesterday. Looks like a lot of underbrush and leaves burning. I didn't see any large trees burnt. Local (take it for what that's worth) said the big oaks and other hardwoods take a lot more to get burning vs the soft wood trees. Said that's why it's a lot of smoke but not huge flames and slower moving than out west. Everyone around here seems to a little on edge about one of these fires really getting out of control .
Saw the fire all along 129 just a few miles south of Deals Gap and along the Cheoah river. All burning along there, but its stopped there by the river and hwy 129. Exactly as cas joker stated, its a low intensity creeping style of fire. Not the tall flames sometimes seen out west. Mostly ground clutter, stumps, leaves, etc. The wild card is still the wind. Only if it gets gusty and such, will it start to blow up. A bud is up from Atlanta, and actually got out today for the first time in a days (been staying close to the house, in case chit gets real again) and went to local forest service maintained 100yrd range and burned some powder. Had dinner at Tapoco lodge, and talked to a young fire fighter there. He drove a fire engine solo all the way from western Co to here in NC. Said it took 3 days driving. Truck was governed down to 60mph max.
They had 2 choppers, and 2 of those big scooper planes today..all dumping huge amounts of water on the Maple Springs fire (Joyce Kilmer wilderness fire). Exert from their Facebook page report this evening (Maple Springs/Old Roughy Fire).. "Two CL-415 “Super Scoopers” combined to drop almost 50 loads of water totaling more than 70,000 gallons of water on the western flank of the fire where it is most active. In addition, helicopters dropped nearly 10,000 gallons of water on the southern flank of the fire in the Joyce Kilmer Slickrock Wilderness."
Oh yeah.. Wesser fire tower burnt down today from the Tellico (gap) fire. Its a sad day for the locals. An awesome 1 mile steep hike up to it via the AT, was always a fav day hike/mtb ride(another bike legal trail went up to it).I've also backpacked by it a few times. .."sigh"..
That's awful. My wife and i were just there two weeks ago to ride the blue ridge. Stayed in Maggie Valley, none of this had started yet although there was a lot of talk from the locals about the drought. We were riding along the Cherohala at the Telico river when I spotted the first wild bald eagle I've ever seen. Crushes me to hear that it's all burning.
Sad for sure, but the irony of a fire tower burning down.... Wish the smoke would drift south for a couple of days. Great scent cover for hunting. But damn, I'd much prefer rain.