Tag Archives: fire

More Gratitude Cat

cats, curiosity, outside, shadows, sleep, stretch, trees, weather, window, , , , , ,

Sunday, September 20, 2020, 12:58 pm — Teeny Tuxedo … at last! … open window! … fresh air! …
tuxedo cat

… 3:11 pm … clear blue sky! … NO MORE WILDFIRE SMOKE! … grateful for the chance to relax … stretch out … breathe easily … and sleep! …
tuxedo cat tuxedo cat tuxedo cat tuxedo cat

Smoke Patrol Cat

cats, curiosity, shadows, trees, weather, window, , , , , , ,

Thursday, September 17, 2020, 2:10 pm — Teeny Tuxedo … on her rounds … checking the WILDFIRE SMOKE conditions around the butterfly bush … (8 minutes earlier, she had been at the north-facing kitchen window) …
tuxedo cat

… butterfly bush shadows … pink-tinged smoky sunlight …

… 4 days earlier … Sunday, Sept. 13, 7:19 am …
tuxedo cat

Smoke Hazard Cat

cats, outside, trees, weather, window, , , , , , , ,

Thursday, September 10, 2020, 2:41 pm — Perkins … that pink-tinged, smoky sunlight means one thing … wildfires … south, across the Columbia River, in Oregon …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat ginger / red / orange tabby cat

  • 3 years ago … Perkins … Fire and Sun Cat, Sept. 5, 2017 … Eagle Creek fire, across the Columbia … Multnomah Falls in Oregon … bad … but not as devastating as now

Another Smoky Day Cats

animals, birds, cats, curiosity, food, health, outside, shadows, weather, window, YouTube, , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, August 20, 2018, 8:05 am — Teeny Tuxedo and Perkins … all eyes on the morning birds in the butterfly bush … another windows closed, smoky day … 85° …  the haze kept  it about 10° lower than predicted …
tuxedo cat, ginger / red / orange tabby cat ginger / red / orange tabby cat tuxedo cat, ginger / red / orange tabby cat ginger / red / orange tabby cat

8:09 am … down on ground level … Notch-Ear Bunny by a friendly molehill … dig, dig, dig, you tunnelin’ moles! …

Eating extra, extra fast … that pinkish tinged light … MORE smoke … from up north … British Columbia, Canada … extra bad air quality today and tomorrow …

Afternoon Shade Cats

birds, cats, curiosity, outside, shadows, sleep, stretch, trees, weather, window, , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, August 17, 2018, 2:00 pm — Teeny Tuxedo … Perkins’ reflection …
tuxedo cat, ginger / red / orange tabby cat

… a tiny rust-colored butterfly …
tuxedo cat, tiny butterfly tuxedo cat

… days shorter …  sun lower in the sky … much more shade … much more pleasant 81°, the lowest since 95° on Tuesday … and bluish sky instead of gray smoke! …
tuxedo cat tuxedo cat, ginger / red / orange tabby cat

… butterfly bush visitors … “white butterfly” … flitting away …

… young goldfinch …

Sunflower Zest

outside, trees, weather, , ,

Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 5:20 pm — Sunflowers … brighten up a smoky day …

July 26, 2:01 pm … three weeks earlier … before the sunflowers’ growth spurt … trellises, jasmine … AND before the wildfire smoke of the past few days …

This is Perk and Teeny’s 1,200th post!!

Paw, Eyes Close-up Cat

birds, cats, family memorabilia, outside, shadows, sleep, stretch, weather, window, , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 3:06 pm — Perkins … wildfire smoky haze … light has pinkish-gold tint … air quality still “unhealthy for sensitive groups” … 88° (hooray! below 90°) … windows closed during day … not much bird action …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat ginger / red / orange tabby cat

… one of Mom’s towels … 1980s? … “Made in U.S.A.” … a rarity these days …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat ginger / red / orange tabby cat

Afternoon Fire Cat

animals, cats, curiosity, outside, trees, weather, window, , , , , , ,

Tuesday, September 5, 2017, 5:45 pm — Perkins and the butterfly bush … Who’s out and about on this smoky, air pollution warning day? …
squirrel, ginger / red / orange tabby cat

Squirrel! …
squirrel squirrel

5:48 pm … Smoke … still … Eagle Creek Fire … east, up the Columbia River Gorge … jumped the river this morning to the Washington side, Archer Mountain …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat

Fire and Sun Cat

cats, grooming, sleep, stretch, weather, window, yawn, YouTube, , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, September 5, 2017, 10:01 am — Perkins … pink-tinted sunlight of the Eagle Creek Fire …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat

Hazy sun reflected in her eye … enlarge photo for better look …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat

11:17 am … pink light now tinged with gold through the smoke …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat ginger / red / orange tabby cat ginger / red / orange tabby cat

… hazy sun still in her eyes …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat

Paw Trick and Fire Cat

cats, computer, food, fun, yawn, YT, , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, September 5, 2017, 9:41 am — Teeny … her new trick … rather, communication! … when she wants a teeny-tiny smidge of mozzarella or pepper jack cheese (Tillamook) … she raises her right paw! … or to sit with me while I’m computerizing … Note the pink-hued smoky sunlight … Eagle Creek Fire jumped the Columbia River this morning to Archer Mountain, Washington side! …
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**This is a favorite Perkins and Teeny Tuxedo post

New Fan and Fire Cats

cats, Finnish, grooming, sleep, stretch, weather, YouTube, , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, September 5, 2017, 8:56 am — Perkins … new Pelonis 9 in. window fan, dual motors, 3 speeds, reversible control can draw air in and blow air out at same time … from Jantzen Beach Home Depot last night … the moon, blood red/orange from the Eagle Creek Fire … pink-hued sunlight on the fan from smoke in air … 98° Sat, 95° Sun, 92° Mon … have to keep windows closed …
ginger / red / orange tabby cat

The fan has worked well … Teeny Tuxedo is ready to warm up under the sheet …
tuxedo cat
tuxedo cat tail

Fire and Smoke Cat

curiosity, other cats, outside, weather, window, , , , , , ,

Eagle Creek Fire, Columbia Gorge (Oregon) began Sat, Sep 2, jumped Columbia River to Archer Mnt. (Washington), early Tue, Sep 5 … Smoke, ash falling all the way over here … Kept windows closed all Tue thru Wed evening … new fans helped, but felt claustrophobic after midnite, Wed, opened windows … closed again during day Thu … Thu night smoke finally disappeared, wind blowing from west.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017, 8:27 am — Cousin cat, Moka, looking up at the falling ash …
Moka

Ash on the umbrella … wood chips … rather than papery thin …
ash on umbrella ash on umbrella

“Eagle Creek Fire taken from Washington side of Bonneville Dam on Monday, Sept. 4, 2017. Photo by Tristan Fortsch via KATU News” …

This is horrible news. According to the Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office, the Eagle Creek Fire jumped the Columbia River Gorge last night and is now burning on both sides of the Columbia river as of Tuesday morning.

The Eagle Creek Fire, which was originally started by fireworks, moved approximately 12 miles westward through the Columbia Gorge last night between 9 p.m. Monday night, and 5 a.m. this Tuesday morning.

According to the Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office spokesperson, Damon Simmons, a spot fire broke out on the Washington side of the river near Archer Mountain burning 10-20 acres. On the Oregon side, another spot fire of approximately 100 acres is burning near Rooster Rock State Park and Multnomah Falls.

Pray for rain, thank you to all the firefighters risking their lives, and god bless to all who have lost during this tragic fire season. — Sasha Lyons – September 5, 2017

Photo gallery, Tristan Fortsch … Eagle Creek fire … from Washington side …

Oregon’s Eagle Creek Fire and the New Reality of Life in the Smoke-Filled American West

By Michelle Nijhuis, The New Yorker, September 7, 2017

Where I live, on the edge of the Columbia River, in southern Washington State, the light is yellow and strange, scattered by the thick smoke of a wildfire about twenty miles downstream. The Eagle Creek fire, which started last Saturday afternoon, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge, quickly spread over more than thirty thousand acres of dizzyingly steep terrain; as of Thursday morning, it was only five per cent contained. Over the holiday weekend, the fire trapped a hundred and forty day hikers on a popular trail, obliging them to spend a cold, hungry, and terrifying night in the woods. It has since forced about seven hundred people to evacuate their homes, and hundreds of others to prepare to leave on short notice. Some of the most beloved outdoor spots in the Pacific Northwest are in the path of the blaze. Already, the region has begun to mourn the transformation of its waterfall-fringed forests of Douglas fir and hemlock.

My neighbors and I are lucky: we haven’t been evacuated, and we don’t expect to be. At this distance, we face not mortal threats but inconveniences and oddities. Sticky white ash coats the laundry outside, packages are delayed, major roads are closed, and outdoor recess is cancelled. The sunrises and sunsets are lurid. The streets are unusually quiet—everyone is staying inside as much as they can—but the smoke sneaks around windows and doors, and the smell is inescapable. We cough and rub our eyes and hope for the wind to stop.

I’ve lived in rural parts of the western United States for the past twenty years, and every summer has had its smoky spells, some more than others. I know people who have lost their homes to wildfire, and I know what I would take from mine if I had to evacuate. Fire is part of most of the region’s forests, and as such it’s an occasional part of our lives, too. But wildfires are bigger and more destructive than they used to be, and the fire season now stretches beyond the summer and well into the school year—in some places, even nudging into what we used to think of as winter. Climate change, combined with a century of overenthusiastic fire suppression and the resulting buildup of fuel, has turned the once occasional emergency of wildfire into a chronic condition.

The smoke that lies so heavily on my town is mostly from the Eagle Creek fire, but some of it surely comes from the dozens of other wildfires under way in the Pacific Northwest. In early August, we were wreathed in smoke from British Columbia; in late August, it was coming from central Oregon. As of Thursday, seventy-six fires were burning over a million and a half acres of the western U.S., and a hundred and thirty-nine were burning in British Columbia, which is suffering its worst fire season on record. So much ash has rained down on Portland and Seattle that many residents are recalling the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Like Atlantic hurricanes, our wildfires are now overlapping, with little or no relief between; on Monday, when a friend posted on Facebook that he was “doing fine,” another asked, “Sorry, but which disaster are you in?”

The Eagle Creek fire was apparently started by a fifteen-year-old boy from Vancouver, Washington, who on Saturday afternoon was seen lobbing a smoke bomb from a hiking trail into the steep basalt ravine cut by Eagle Creek. Liz FitzGerald, a Portland woman who witnessed the incident, told me that the boy was part of a group of about a dozen teen-agers, and that his friends looked on, some giggling, as the firework dropped into the two-hundred-foot-deep canyon. “Don’t you know how dangerous that is?” FitzGerald told them. “This whole place is so dry!” They shrugged.

FitzGerald continued up the narrow trail, but after a few minutes realized that she should heed her own warning; when she turned back, she saw that the thin plume from the smoke bomb had already thickened into something more threatening. She ran the mile and a half to the trailhead, and when she passed the group of teen-agers, she told them that they had started a forest fire. “What are we supposed to do about it now?” one said. “Call the freaking fire department!” FitzGerald replied.

In the trailhead parking lot, FitzGerald told a Forest Service law-enforcement officer what she’d seen, and, as they talked, she noticed that the teen-agers had reached their own vehicle and were already pulling out onto the highway. The officer, with FitzGerald in tow, gave chase and stopped the alleged perpetrator; charges have not yet been filed, but an investigation is ongoing. Social media has since lit up with fury at the bomb-thrower, but FitzGerald points out that the entire group of teen-agers—and a number of passing adults—watched his actions and did nothing. “Everyone wants to just nail this kid, but so many people saw this crazy behavior,” she said. “They were all complicit.” Five days later, the smoke has settled in—a stinking, gritty reminder that the rest of us are complicit, too.

What the Cats Saw

animals, birds, cats, outside, trees, weather, window, ,

Friday, August 21, 2015, 8:01 pm — A daredevil frog climbed the bedroom window screen … enlarge photo to see its front fingers latched onto the mesh … Could this be the Late Night Frog, July 17?
frog on bedroom window screen

Saturday, August 22, 2015, 2:58 pm — Smoke from the eastern Washington and Oregon wildfires … kitchen window …
smoke from eastern Washington wildfires, kitchen window

Monday, August 24, 2015, 4:30 pm — King (or Queen) Robin of the Molehill Mountain …
robin on molehill