GOOD NEWS. Infrared log from the latest flyover shows only isolated heat spots in the #CampFire remaining. There are no active fire front areas. See map.
1.32″ of rain was recorded at the Jarbo Gap weather station on 11/21, and fuel moisture is over 25% now.
While these few hotspots remain, and may smolder for a few days, the rain has stopped the spread of fire, and more rain is coming. We do have some gusty winds expected over the next 24-36 hours, but I don’t see conditions on the ground that would enable the fire to spread again from these hotspots. From all indications, the larger fire is extinguished, in my opinion.
This is what was said in last night’s CalFire incident report issued at 8:47PM (source)
“Today’s precipitation has minimized fire activity and all fire lines are holding. Firefighters are continuing tactical patrols throughout the fire area. Search and Rescue crews continue to secure buildings and conduct a methodical search within the fire area for missing victims. Fire suppression repair has been temporarily suspended in areas that are inaccessible due to precipitation. Crews continued to remove unneeded hose and equipment from the fire area.”
And, more rain is coming. This HRRR model animation shows estimated radar reflectivity, indicating precipitation through Thanksgiving Day and evening. Note: on some browsers, you may have to click the image to get it animating.
Probably the end to the fire season in NOCal for this season. Unfortunately not the end of poor forest management and other malfeasance by the state of California and to some extent the US Forestry Service.
A lot of heartbreak, misery (which will continue for a lot of folks for a long while) and financial catastrophe for way too many people, not to mention all the lives lost to a terrible, terrifying death.
Here’s hoping maybe something good will come out of all this and changes will be made. You aren’t going to eliminate fires in the area. They have been there for thousands of years. But better planning and actions will benefit all in the future.
People that build houses in such areas will have to “firewise” and keep at it. Vegetations growth is relentless. If an owner doesn’t want to do the work, or can’t do it because of lack of funds, health, or any other reason, that person should move. The USFS is not responsible for cleaning up a person’s property. I’ll also guess people do not want the City or the County having it done and sending you the bill.
This sort of thing is a sad situation, having multiple causes, no easy solutions, and a long tail. We live in an area like this, but in a few years I won’t be able to do the things I’ve been doing for the past 25. Then we will move.
See:
https://www.north40productions.com/eom-home
The Era of Megafires is a 60-minute multi-media presentation ….
Best wishes to you and yours Anthony. I hope their suffering will soon be over.
“Let It Rain”
May the rains put an end to the horrors of the fire and help clear the air and ease the suffering a bit for all those affected.
Anthony Watts, within 24 hours low it will move north.
It always impresses me at how quickly mother nature can deal with something people have been trying to do for weeks.
Of course, the not-so-hidden cost is the rain will trigger more fuel to grow. See you next year!
It could also trigger mud and ash slides, unfortunately.
Thank goodness it must be a huge relief for everyone concerned! My sincere good wishes to the good people of California! AtB
Night time temps rose 10 to 12 F in my area as compared to the previous 2 weeks. Although for camping dry and cold is easier to deal with than rain. These rains intially moved in from the south, and that pushed the cold arctic air out of the way. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_cloud_water/orthographic=-128.04,36.41,1107/loc=-129.443,42.984
Let it rain on California put out the fires, grow the food, fill the dams, flow the rivers.
Hope you’re back on deck soon Anthony and crew.
A disaster that with the right forest management may have been less.
Something positive could result.
Liberal/Left/Democrat policies are being soundly criticized.
In the late 1980s, the popular uprising by Eastern Europeans was gaining strength. And I recall that at the time there was a massive earthquake in Armenia (in 1988 a Soviet province) and locals were dismayed that Moscow was unable to help. The International Red Cross and other such agencies got there first.
Soviet central planning was celebrated not just by party hacks but by the best-selling American economics textbooks.
Deaths were in the order of 50,000 and the wonders of highly-rated central planning dominated by political imperative was widely seen not to work.
It contributed to the ultimate success of the uprising that brought down the Berlin Wall and eventually Communism.
Accomplished by ordinary folk without intellectuals.
The current popular uprising could catch on in parts of California.
The disasters of political intrusion can be readily seen.
If only the rains would have been a few weeks ago, what a difference that would have made. In the scheme of things, it is just weather. It just makes me absolutely sick to see what what happened in Paradise. Logic has to prevail going forward now, in rebuilding and fire smarting things the best we can.
Thinking of all the victims and their families today, as well as all the displaced that are homeless. I hope peoples and Gov’t can all come together to help everybody transform back to some normalcy, but I know it will take time. Keep your chin up California! We are all wishing you the best.
Had these rains come early enough to prevent the fires this year, the fires would have come another year. Only such a conflagration was able to bring public attention to the overgrowth of California’s woodlands and forests.
SR
Yes, you may be right. We never know what would have happened to the rabbit had it zigged instead of zagged. There is absolutely no doubt that the forests everywhere have become overgrown and decadent and they are a firescape evolved species. They are just doing what they are supposed to do, as they always have. We are now in the way and we have to realize that. The urban/rural interface has to be re-thought to allowing human settlements the best chance to survive such potential conflagrations. We can’t have it both ways.
This is my worst nightmare, having spent my entire life in forest management with one of my businesses. But if you have anti logging environmentalists trying to preserve something as if it were frozen in time, then this is the result. And their frozen in time wishes for a pristine forest or ecosystem is false too, since it isn’t natural anymore once humans modify it with fire control and/or habitation. We have to favor humans in these populated areas and set aside the parks and wild places for nature. While there are a lot of solutions, risk will always be present as this is the nature of the beast.
Earthling2
The fanatical greens would have a culled human population herded into inner city ghetto’s so the worlds wildernesses would be fit to be visited by them only on foot or bicycle.
Until the bears started eating the green visitors, then they would demand them culled as well.
What we should remember though is that ‘greens’ are invariably ill informed layman, zealot, do-gooders.
My eldest daughter is a Green, with a capital ‘G’. She is a Zoologist who is scornful of these interfering busy-bodies especially when it comes to GM crops. As she says (as many on WUWT as well) plants have been genetically modifying themselves for millions of years quite happily. All humans are doing is speeding up the process.
My late father in law was also a serious environmentalist, a senior forester with the UN, launching major projects in the 1950’s, planned into the 23rd Century, predominantly in equatorial regions. He despised the greens and their concept of forestry being frozen in time. Co-existence and forestry management is the key to the problem, not ‘hands off’ green hysteria according to him.
How do you approach the topics on CAGW and climate change we discuss here HotScott, with your daughter? I ask because I have an older bother who is a retired university professor who has also swallowed the hook, line and sinker with all the climate change nonsense. He is incredibly intelligent and very well read as an old respected English Prof and novelist, but somehow he believes his fellow comrades in academia would never tell a tall tale. I don’t bother bring up the subject at any family gatherings for the most part, even though the most of us siblings are also skeptics to some degree or another. The younger kids can maybe be excused for maybe being brainwashed, but they do have their ears and eyes wide open. With my brother, it is case closed.. not even have a discussion, which makes me sad. I am effectively shunned if I even bring up the subject. I hope you are able to have well thought discussions with your Zoologist trained daughter?
Late fall with an El Nino cooking. Rain and mountain snow..
Thanks be to God..
Now for the reckoning of these insane polices…
Tomorrow, he will be back high above California. El Nino does not work.
https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/soi/
The pressure in Chico is now 1018 hPa.
Would be interested in your comments on my assessment of the attribution of drought events to human caused global warming. Link below.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/11/22/agwdrought/
Southern California will still be threatened by fires.