The PNW is Lit

[SurfnFish]

Being called the worse fire season in three decades.
OR has had 1.9 million acres on fire, WA over 400,000.
The battle to save the small town of Sisters involved dozens of aircraft and thousands of firefighters.
Northern Spokane is lit, 600 structures/homes destroyed, over 5,000 structures in immediate danger, with a week long heat dome w/ strong winds about to ramp up.
The 25% budget reduction in USFS fire fighting has reduced the federal resources being deployed to help the states, and FEMA just turned down federal assistance for the counties/residents impacted by two of the biggest OR fires, stating they 'did not meet required criteria'.
To meet the challenge of what is being projected as the new normal, our states have no choice but to build up the respective forest fire fighting resources, which will require additional taxes.
Meanwhile, we have the hottest month of the summer to still get through.

 

[Pink Nighty]

As I looked over the water into canada the other day, I watched this strange looking blob grow rapidly above the treeline. After checking for any BC volcanic eruptions, I learned that this is in fact a pyrocumulus cloud. This one appears to be in somewhere in the vicinity of whistler.

 

[fatbillybob]

Amazing fires in PNW. In cali we are only 68% of the normal number of acres burned by this time annually which is around 1/2 mil acres annually. We did not get good snowpack this year but did much better than the rest of the west and actually had a decent ski season. PNW by contrast burns about 1 mil acres per year and has already hit 1.7mil acres burned with more hot months still to get through.

It's really bad for the people who have lost homes. Even the super wealthy victims of the nearing 2 year old Pacific Palisades fire are road blocked by government slow walk on permitting and non-pay/slow pay of their insurance companies that today only 30 of 6000 homes have been rebuilt. Those without means have little chance to ever get whole again. To make matters worse Senator Adam Shiff has introduced a bill to prevent Private equity and speculators from buying burned property preventing victims who just want to get on with their lives to sell and move somewhere else.

I have a friend who lost his house in the Santa Rosa fire. He sold out and moved to Carlsbad and got on with his life within a month. I have a client who lost his house in the pacific palisades fire and it has taken 1.5 years to get through permitting and he just broke ground. He has lost a lot of weight, looked stressed, the last 1.5 years have been hell on him. Hopefully rebuilding in PNW is easier than Cali and state governments leave home owner options open.