Jim Whittington🔥

YouTube video by Alberta Wildfire Wildfire Investigator

Fire investigators do tough work. They literally crawl on the ground in circles around the ignition point with a sharp eye and often a magnifying glass, looking for the smallest of clues.

This is from Canada, but the same principles apply.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIFz...

A Fish Falls From the Sky and Sparks a Brush Fire in British Columbia Officials say a flying osprey dropped its catch, which then struck power lines, causing sparks that ignited dry grass.

Folks often assume that sheer number of wildfires in West must be linked to intentional arson--despite abundant evidence to contrary. But this partly stems from profound underestimation re: just how easy it can be to spark a fire under right conditions... www.nytimes.com/2025...

Yep. Human-caused does not equal arson, yet those two are often intentionally conflated by bad actors to generate outrage and to dismiss the causes that led to the conditions which allowed the fire to get large/destructive.

Interior Order Chokes Off Permits for Solar and Wind on Federal Lands The department creates a seemingly impossible new permitting criteria for renewable energy.

HUGE: The Trump administration will no longer permit any solar or wind projects on federal lands unless they produce more energy-per-acre than coal, gas or nuclear power plants.

Solar and wind literally produce less energy per acre, so simply this may just kill off any project on federal lands.

Under no scenario is this a good move & in this instance, where no thought has been given to what is being lost & destroyed, there will be bad outcomes. Also, the reconstruction will be enormously difficult.

We should be making more agile orgs to deal with the coming challenges. This is not that.

I taught an emergency management class in Abilene a few years ago and went to the Greyhound Museum. It's mostly about racing, but quite a bit of dog history is in there as well. Also, there were two greyhounds hanging around. It was worth the nominal fee and 20-30 minutes.

Poster for the play "Shane" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Poster shows a Black cowboy with shadows covering his eyes looming above a montage of fences, bullets, and mountains.

Just got back from seeing "Shane" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Not quite the book, not quite the movie, but just a darn good spin on a classic and with a great cast to boot. Well done OSF!

Mammatus clouds over the house right now. Thunder to the SE of Medford, OR.

South central/SE OR catching some strikes right now & we'll likely be chasing new starts for the next few days, but I'm more worried about ID & MT. Looks like the Nez Perce & Bitterroot forests in MT are being hit with a good number, as is the Boise NF. Some around Helena, MT too.

Thread on Dragon Bravo, which continues its serial reincarnations. Began as lightning fire in confine and contain mode (escaped). Morphed into urban fire (incinerated park's developed area). Swelled into proto-megafire (blew over major containment line). Now a free-burning megafire.

Newsom Seeks $18 Billion for Utilities’ Wildfire Fund as California Faces Future Blazes California Governor Gavin Newsom is circulating a legislative proposal to shore up a state fund for utilities that’s at risk of being depleted following the deadly wildfires that struck Los Angeles Co...

Important news in the California wildfire world.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Thousands in Greece and Turkey evacuate as winds and heat fan wildfires Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft join rescue effort in Greece, and firefighter among those killed in Turkey

Quite a summer for European fire.
I'm reminded of a passage from A.C.Clarke's 2001: "Beyond the reaches of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire.." Not a bad account of the maturing Pyrocene.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

A thread 🧵 on the importance of the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, from the point of view of Washington State (unofficially, of course; this is just my opinion). Don't just take my word for it, though - read the NTHMP 2024 annual report here: www.weather.gov/media/nthmp/... 🌊

Yep, we may catch some lightning this evening.

Numerous strikes led to 33 new starts this morn in OR with one fire hitting 8,000 acres. Significant lightning potential continues into Thurs with a likely increase in initial attack. Any nighttime lightning on the west side of the Cascades will add to response complexity. Cooler weather next week.

Tsunami waves exceeding 3m above tide forecast for Ecuador, Hawaii, etc, and up to 1m in ANTARCTICA!!! www.tsunami.gov/events/PHEB/...

Ugh. Fire, though Fie might work too:

fie
/fī/
exclamation archaic•humorous
used to express disgust or outrage.

PNW Significant Fie Potential Outlook:

"Central Oregon is at high risk for significant fires on Tuesday and Wednesday due to lightning and dry fuels. Thunderstorms may drift west of the Cascade crest Wednesday into Thursday."

gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/content...

I'm a wildland firefighter in a film. I'm either a Hot Shot or a pilot & never look at maps. I'm always clean & well-groomed. I somehow manage to always put myself in a dangerous spot where I only react to events while violating every tenet taught in leadership classes. I speak military, not ICS.

Chart showing average Atlantic hurricane and tropical storm activity from May to December based on data from 1944 to 2020. Activity increases sharply in August, peaking in mid-September. A marker indicates the current date as July 28, just before activity begins to rise.

On average, 86% of all named tropical systems in the Atlantic occur after August 2, and the first hurricane doesn't form until August 11.
We have a long season to go. Prepare now – Learn how at weather.gov/safety/hurricane

"We’ve got 120-some national forests and administrative units. Do you want all those people reporting to the chief?”

I don't think they want anyone reporting. They just want folks to do as they are told.

We continue to excel at melting ice.

Two hotshots, two memoirs - High Country News A Q+A with outliers in fire.

A discussion between High Country News wildfire correspondent Kylie Mohr and authors River Selby and Kelly Ramsey, who both release memoirs this summer, dives into their experiences on the male-dominated fire line.

Wildfire burns through northern suburb of Athens as residents told to evacuate People in Kryoneri, north-east of the Greek capital, receive SMS messages telling them to get to safe areas

Wildfire burns through northern suburb of Athens as residents told to evacuate

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Ten workers killed battling wildfires in Turkey Forestry workers and rescuers were trapped by fire following a change in the wind direction.

RIP friends. The memory is ours.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Jackson Browne, Running on Empty

Fleetwood Mac, Rumours

Eric Clapton, Slowhand

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Street Survivors

What perfect albums came out the year you turned 16?

My county, like every county, has a history that is too often forgotten.

There's a decent amount of contemporary news reporting and anecdotal bits when there is a notable failure (e.g., 2018 Camp Fire) but yeah, not much else that these non-doctored eyes have seen.

Some good truths in this thread. Learning from failure is a necessary ingredient of any good science or crisis/disaster communicator. Also, if you rely on LLMs, you're not pushing your envelope and it will catch up with you at a critical time.

More research needed on wildfire smoke toxicity, scientists say as they warn of pollution 'time bomb' | CBC News Scientists are concerned the smoke from wildfires in Manitoba could be even more toxic than usual, saying more research needs to be done on the kind of pollutants that are being released into the air.

Flames may re-release toxic chemicals in historical mining areas, though risks are unknown: researcher www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...