#windy fire

Excerpt from this KTLA story:

Four famous giant sequoias were not harmed by a wildfire that reached the edge of Giant Forest in California’s Sequoia National Park, authorities said.

The Four Guardsmen, a group of trees that form a natural entryway on the road to the forest, were successfully protected from the KNP Complex fire by the removal of nearby vegetation and by wrapping fire-resistant material around the bases of the trees, the firefighting management team said in a statement Sunday.

The KNP Complex began as two lightning-sparked fires that eventually merged and has scorched more than 37 square miles (96 square kilometers) in the heart of sequoia country on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.

There was no immediate word, however, on the full extent of damage in several other sequoia groves reached by a separate blaze, the Windy Fire, in the Giant Sequoia National Monument area of Sequoia National Forest and the Tule River Indian Reservation.

The Windy Fire has burned through the Peyrone and Red Hill groves, as well as a portion of the Long Meadow Grove along the Trail of 100 Giants.

Local Prescribed Burn Out by 10am, Re-Ignited at Sundown

Sept. 25, 2021

We awoke to extremely heavy smoke from a prescribed burn to the west of Frazier Park. You could smell it strongly as it wafted in from over the mountain in the Los Padres Forest. The US Forest Service extinguished the fire by around 10am, which is the general “rule” for prescribed burns. The air cleared quickly due to our obolixes blasting away the air pollution. We also have hundreds of orgonite pieces, a chembuster, quartz medicine wheels, and an earth pipe in our hill.

The atmosphere was actually high in OR today, which is why the pollution didn’t linger after the fire was put out. In a DOR environment, this would have resulted in “smog.” Instead, we had nice, clear skies dotted with OR clouds by the evening and the air smelled clean again. Unfortunately, a new fire was ignited this evening at sunset, and tomorrow morning we may find ourselves engulfed in smoke again.

There are no wildfires in Southern California currently. The only wildfires burning relatively nearby, the Windy Fire and the KNP Complex Fire, are in Central California. They are both about a three hour drive to the north of us. The wind is not blowing the smoke due south into our area, nor would it be fragrant like a campfire gone amok as it was this morning if the pollution came from so far away. These Central California wildfires are also being blamed for smoky skies even farther south in Los Angeles. It is clear that the Forest Service has once again started prescribed burns, and with a 1 million acre per year quota, we can expect more of this in Angeles and Los Padres National Forests.

The Windy Fire and KNP Complex Fires may both be prescribed burns gone wrong, or are actually going according to plan. Neither of these fires are Cal Fire incidents, so we must go to the Federal incident site to get information from the entities handling these fires. Additionally neither of these fires is being handled like any of the other wildfires this season in California. The Windy Fire has been allowed to burn 71,349 acres as of this morning and is only 5% contained. The KNP Complex Fire has burned 42.048 acres and is 0% contained, according to all news articles. Instead of reporting containment like all the other fires, Inciweb reports an “estimated containment date” for the KNP Complex Fire, Oct. 10, 2021 at 12am. If I didn’t know better, I might think that these were being allowed to burn and no one was digging a ditch at all. Even the horrendous Dixie Fire in Northern California was gradually contained, so this is very unusual. The Windy Fire and KNP Complex Fire have seen little to no containment in over two weeks of burning.

We did not have an air quality advisory for the mountains today, only for the Central Valley, which is being affected by these two wildfires. The air here was as bad as it gets, so it would have been appropriate to issue an advisory. This is more evidence that it was not smoke from the Windy and KNP Fires, but from local prescribed burns being performed at exactly the worst time possible to create as much air pollution as possible. These burns are not being disclosed, so they are also not reported on by the weather media.

***UPDATE, Sept. 25, 2021, 11pm***

Inciweb lowers containment for Windy Prescribed Burn to 2% and completely removes the “estimated containment date” (still no containment percentage) on the KNP Complex Prescribed Burn!!! Compare the images below from Inciweb..com to the images from earlier today above.

Windy Fire (Prescribed Burn) lowered from 5% to 2% containment (after burning for over 2 weeks).

KNP Complex Fire (Prescribed Burn): no containment after burning for over 2 weeks, no longer reporting the end of the prescribed burn on Oct. 10, 2021.

Excerpt from this story from the LA Times:

Gusty winds blowing through the southern Sierra Nevada continue to spread the growing KNP Complex and Windy fires, which have burned more than 135,000 acres combined as they tear through steep, rugged terrain.

Furious westerly winds — some gusting up to 40 mph — fanned the Windy fire’s growth by nearly 2,000 acres in a day. The fire, raging in the Sequoia National Forest and Tule River Indian Reservation, had ballooned to 87,318 acres on Tuesday and was only 4% contained.

The KNP Complex fire, burning to the north in the Sequoia National Park, had burned through 48,344 acres and was 8% contained.

Both fires erupted Sept. 9 amid a massive lightning storm that sent dozens of bolts shooting into the dense forest, home to groves of giant sequoia trees, including the famed General Sherman tree. Since then, they have expanded rapidly through the drought-stricken vegetation.

Finally, Progress Toward Ending the Planned Fires in Sequoia

Sept. 30, 2021

According to Inciweb, the Windy Fire is now at 37% containment and the KNP complex is at 20%. This is good news considering that these fires burned for over two weeks with no containment at all. We had an air quality advisory today, but the air was relatively fine, with only a little bit of grey particulate pollution far in the distance to the east.