74 replies to this topic

[Procyon]

Some rain should help.

 

[scopewizard]

https://firesmoke.ca...ecasts/current/

 

This is a good site for 24 hours prediction.

 

It is not getting better in the Eastern side of the country, bad around the Great lakes.

[archival]

There is a reason for them which cannot be mentioned here, but it is related to petards so I don't thing people from some nations should be allowed to gripe about them.  We are all stardust but some of those smoke particles have our names on them too, no matter how indirectly.

 

Ironically smoke is only fair.

[Amazed]

I can report that in Port Sanilac Saturday night was supposed to be clouded over. There was a slight haze all day.
At sunset the moon was looking good.
I set out my Seestar S50 and took some nice moon photos. Then at.10 pm I took 5 collections of deep sky objects until 2 am. They came out pretty good.After 2:30 am I was.to.tired to continue and the battery was down to 11%.
So there is some hope depending on conditions.

[later]

This site seems to be pretty accurate.

https://weather.gc.c...ork_anim_e.html

[CharLakeAstro]

Your post is wildly inaccurate... one could say "the smoke is thick".

 

My nephew works full-time for the Ontario MNRF, for the past 8 years.  He is in the Aviation Forest Fire and Emergency Services (AFFES). It is a young person sport, physically gruelling.

 

He is working the Red Lake fires now. These crews are dedicated to fighting wildfires, mostly in the North but deployed south occasionally also. They start with Forestry Technician college then after, take additional training specific to Boreal Forest Firefighting.

 

Besides Ontario, the provinces of Manitoba, Quebec, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia all have dedicated fire crews, as does Alberta and BC. Some of the Nova Scotia teams are at present deployed to the west. Quebec has a similar size program to Ontario.

 

In Canada, forest fire-fighting is Provincial jurisdiction, not Federal, but the Federal Govt supports the Provincial work particularly around procurement and equipment cross-standardization.

 

Aircraft, again, totally inaccurate. The CL415 Enhanced Aerial Firefighter has replaced the 215, and the 515 is the latest. Many 215s were retrofitted in the EAF to 415 standards. Canada had (64) CL-215(T)/415 in service as of mid-2016 with 9 more on order. In 2024 another order was placed federally for additional 515s to be deployed across the provinces where most needed.

 

I can't believe that someone lacking even basic knowledge of the subject would post such blatantly false information .

 

There's so much we can do..., early fire-detection satellites, smoke jumping teams and fire-proof roofs to start with.

 

The only plane designed for fighting these fires (the CL-215) has been out of production for many years despite the world-wide here's-my-money demands for it.

 

Canada doesn't even have national forest-fire fighting, training, equipment, or inter-provincial standards or any dedicated fire teams.  It's not even a profession like city Fire Departments are.  We even let these fires burn through the winter only to have these same fires burn through communities in the summer.

 

There's so much we can do.  Not only is this a fire problem but smoke affects the breathing health of hundreds of millions of people.

 

I can't believe that letting thousands of homes burn is somehow acceptable.

[vsteblina]

I worked on a National Forest just south of the border and we "borrowed" Canadian air resources all the time.  Every year almost.

 

In fact, we had a large Wilderness area that the Canadians could drop without our permission within 1.5 miles of the border, in certain conditions.  We did notice that for some reason that the Canadians have a hard time with measuring distance.  Km are shorter than miles, but it didn't work out that way.

 

Only once or twice did I see a Canadian fire crew south of the border.  We did have a couple of Canadian pilots lose their lives fighting fire south of the border on the National Forest.

[Monel76]

Last night I was looking the sunset and it look foggy. I trought it was the usual humidity, checking the weather station I read 42%!

The smoke has also reached northern Italy!.

 

 

[Grampa Moose]

Here in West Michigan, same story for the past week. Rain doesn’t seem to help. Had another‘beautiful’ red sunrise this morning. And for heaven’s sake- don’t leave your scopes out, under these skies. The ash and film will cover everything.

[mountain monk]

Well, we had smoke last night, high winds aloft, a nearly full moon, and clouds of green pollen. Alas. I don’t know where the smoke came from. There are the Canadian fires, a fire in Yellowstone NP, and oodles of fires in California.

 

Dark, clear, calm skies.

 

Jack

[jcj380]

"Fog" over farm fields in central Illinois yesterday as I was driving home from Indianapolis.

[ausastronomer]

On the list it appears the Aussies are even coming!

 

I hope our guys can contribute over there and hope everyone in North America stays safe.

Do they "backburn" in North America?  Our fire guys always do a lot of Backburning through winter to stop the spread so quickly when fires do start in Summer.  Last summer was very tame in Oz due to the much cooler than normal summer temperatures, but several years prior were pretty bad!

The Aussie Fire Guys are very good at "containment".  With the type of Forest Fires we get, which are different to just about everywhere else on the planet, they need to be!  Due to the proliferation of Eucalyptus Trees, which excrete highly flammable Eucalyptus Oil Fumes and also burn with tremendous Heat, our fires can spread 2 kilometres along the tops of the trees in < 30 seconds as all of the excreted Eucalyptus Oil ignites in one go.

Wishing everyone over there all the best

[CharLakeAstro]

Yes, but it is usually referred to as a "prescribed burn" (Rx burn)

Essentially creates a boundary of "nothing left to burn" which can be used to alter a wildfire to protect infrastructure etc

 

Do they "backburn" in North America?  

[Dave Mitsky]

Here's the NOAA Smoke Map for Tuesday.

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[Refractor6]

  We've had a few new ones pop up today...human caused has already been determined. One close to a world famous and very important eagle nesting area outside of Vancouver. 

 

The idiots are already in full swing as we brace for another hot dry summer....

[Tony Flanders]

Do they "backburn" in North America?  Our fire guys always do a lot of Backburning through winter to stop the spread so quickly when fires do start in Summer.  Last summer was very tame in Oz due to the much cooler than normal summer temperatures, but several years prior were pretty bad!

As CharLakeAstro says, that's called a "prescribed burn" in North America. Yes, it's done quite often. And one or two major fires have occurred when prescribed burns got out of control.

"Backburn" in North America is something completely different. It's a technique used to fight active fires, where you clear a fire break well ahead of the fire, then set a fire intentionally at the edge of the fire break, which will burn toward the main fire. When the two meet, the main fire has nothing left to burn.

[Jon Isaacs]

There's so much we can do..., early fire-detection satellites, smoke jumping teams and fire-proof roofs to start with.

 

The only plane designed for fighting these fires (the CL-215) has been out of production for many years despite the world-wide here's-my-money demands for it.

 

Canada doesn't even have national forest-fire fighting, training, equipment, or inter-provincial standards or any dedicated fire teams.  It's not even a profession like city Fire Departments are.  We even let these fires burn through the winter only to have these same fires burn through communities in the summer.

 

There's so much we can do.  Not only is this a fire problem but smoke affects the breathing health of hundreds of millions of people.

 

I can't believe that letting thousands of homes burn is somehow acceptable.

 

I think it is a question of resources.  Canada has 40 million people, California has 40 million people. Canada has a GNP of 1.6 trillion dollars, California has a GNP of 3.6 trillion.  Canada has an area of 3.86 million square miles.  The area of California is 0.16 million square miles.  

 

Houses burn in California, people build houses where wildfires as likely.  It's a risk..  Prevention and protection of property before the fires.  

 

Jon

[Procyon]

PM 2.5 was around 10mg/m3 last night, near Montreal. Was out observing until 3am, pretty decent night, but you can tell there's still traces of smoke towards the south, so I observed towards NE, nothing as bad as the last 1-2 weeks though. First time I saw blue skies yesterday since than. Stronger winds came in the last 2 days, it must have helped push it away. You can see it visually also by looking at the moon, it was orange all these nights, now yellow-orange.

The good news is around here it's gone by Thursday and almost everywhere else by Saturday. I feel for the people that live around some of those fires still burning near the Orange spots.

 

Right now:

 

 

Saturday:

 

Edited by Procyon, 11 June 2025 - 12:53 PM.

[Bill Weir]

  We've had a few new ones pop up today...human caused has already been determined. One close to a world famous and very important eagle nesting area outside of Vancouver. 

 

The idiots are already in full swing as we brace for another hot dry summer....

I expect photos of that one today as right now my wife is heading off the Island with her girlfriends for their annual Whistler whoop up. They will be driving right underneath it.

 

Bill

[CharLakeAstro]

  We've had a few new ones pop up today...human caused has already been determined. One close to a world famous and very important eagle nesting area outside of Vancouver. 

 

The idiots are already in full swing as we brace for another hot dry summer....

[Dave Mitsky]

The NOAA Smoke Map for Thursday.

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[AngrySchnauzer]

When it first hit Massachusetts, I actually hadn’t heard about it yet and thought my area was undergoing some crazy increase in light pollution from something. Very annoying but good to know it’s temporary..and honestly, barely worth mentioning considering what the people in the affected area are going through. Hopefully it’s over soon, for everyone. Clear skies

[Look at the sky 101]

There's so much we can do..., early fire-detection satellites, smoke jumping teams and fire-proof roofs to start with.

 

The only plane designed for fighting these fires (the CL-215) has been out of production for many years despite the world-wide here's-my-money demands for it.

 

Canada doesn't even have national forest-fire fighting, training, equipment, or inter-provincial standards or any dedicated fire teams.  It's not even a profession like city Fire Departments are.  We even let these fires burn through the winter only to have these same fires burn through communities in the summer.

 

There's so much we can do.  Not only is this a fire problem but smoke affects the breathing health of hundreds of millions of people.

 

I can't believe that letting thousands of homes burn is somehow acceptable.

This post is full of falsehoods...

[desertstars]

My wife and I are watching a bicycle race in France called the Criterium du Dauphine. At the start of today's stage, the commentator pointed out the skies had a gray, hazy quality to them. The result of smoke from Canadian wildfires. Sounded like nonsense to me, but I checked it out anyway. He's right.

 

https://www.iqair.co...-wildfire-smoke

[The_boots]

Yeah, it's an almost spooky reminder that the world we live in isn't actually all that big. You'd think that I wouldn't need the reminder since I've been looking at Galaxy-scale things so much, but it's still a stark reminder.