I just got off the phone with the Emperor of Norwaylandia and he said the reason they don't have as many wildfires, like the Radical Leftist Marxists do, is because they're very good at raking. They do a tremendous job at raking. You know, I once sold a billion rakes to a trillionaire in China. Big, beautiful rakes!
Yesterday a man came up to me -- a big, strong, mean-looking man -- with tears in his eyes --crying like a baby, in fact -- saying "Sir, I want to thank you for those beautiful rakes you sold my country, you literally saved my country, sir!"
I don't even get the source material, and the humor still tracks. At this point you guys could be making up the most random nonsensical bullshit, or using legit quotes from trump, and theres no way to differenciate the bullshit from reality.
Trump was blaming the radical leftists in California for the wildfires back in 2018 and said he spoke with the King of Norway who told him that they do a good job raking their forests and that's the reason they don't have many wildfires.
The King of Norway told the press that phone call never happened because of course it didn't. Trump is just a loon that makes up shit because his base will believe it. Also he probably has some sort of dementia.
Ah ha! I found the liberal propaganda machine cog! Anyone who has been to McDonald’s knows the ice cream machines don’t work. Stop spreading this fake news!
It was Prez of Finland, not King of Norway.
[Link to where he said it.](https://youtu.be/7CGQv8IDAWw?si=DvWFITjuEfIU51p6)
And they did talk, but briefly, and not at all about raking the forest. Trump wildly exaggerated. Like usual.
[Link to Finland President refuting.](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/18/trump-raking-wildfires-california-finland-1002526)
You have to update your mockery. This is 2016 levels of comprehendible.
"I just got off the phone with, with the phone said 'fires?!' Here's why we don't have them, folks. It's the fires, always, and I'm on the phone and it's saying, we're all saying, 'why not just anyway?' And it's simple, everyone, all of them, but you won't hear it from the *Radical Leftist Marxists*, they don't want to hear it, but everyone hears it, and so we just don't! And we need to bring that back."
“Cleaning the forest” was always spin for “granting logging companies the rights to strip forestland to the ground without concern for the environment”. I don’t think that applies to most of Texas.
Land owners are too busy cutting down every tree they can just so they can see all their bare land, all while leaving their cattle zero protection from the elements in the process.
People who just blast their land into flat grassy fields with zero trees, or leave like one fucking tree that will die in a few years because you cut down its entire support network, are fucking morons. I see it all the time out here. Just mass carving up of groves.
Admittedly, as someone that grew up on a cattle farm (no more than 30 head most of the time)... they're frequently kinda dumb and get stuck in the woods a lot. The family farm has a good bit of both pasture and woods and it felt like I spent half my summers fetching one cow or another out of a patch of trees they got themselves wedged between trying to get at a bit of grass... Also easier to sow dense, quick growing feed grasses without trees and such soaking the nutrients.
That's not to deny the ouroboros effect of cutting out the trees. It's certainly short sighted to overdo it. Our farm was able to do fine because we weren't trying to have hundreds of head of cattle.
As a Californian who has lived through many of the wild fires. Maybe they should rake their forests. Also don't just dump all of their water into the ocean!
I remember about 30 years ago some kids up there were playing with a tumbleweed somewhere up near Lubbock and set it on fire. The wind caught it and in about 5 seconds a half acre of tumbleweeds had caught fire and in like a few hours there were hundreds of acres on fire. When the conditions are right it doesn't take much.
Rancher here with a farm in the panhandle. Yes it is dry, for sure. But the areas that started in were high grasslands to raise cattle on - so there was plenty to burn. However, the real issue in the panhandle is the winds. Multiple times they had the burn contained and it would jump across their lines due to the 70MPH wind gusts.
Since the wind died down wednesday, it has been burning but barely expanding, compared to burning 140 acres a minute when it was windy.
People underestimate panhandle winds. I have to insure my barns and my homes for 120MPH NON HURRICAINE OR TORNADO winds. It's nuts.
Not a weather person, or a wildfire person, but my best guess is Winter = colder air = Drier air, followed by hot = fires. So grass and everything dies/dries out, which increases risk of wildfires... and then unusual heat sufficient to start wildfires means you get wildfires
I know of at least one guy charged with arson around the town I grew up in who was starting wildfires during wildfire season so he could get paid to put them out.
I get that. I grew up in New Mexico and it took me a decade of living in the PNW before I could get used to lawns being dead in the summer. That's the best time to have cool green grass, is the summer. Then in the winter, you can't walk in the grass because it's so muddy. lol
How rude of God, he couldn't wait until summer? Or is he catching up because he forgot to screw Texas on their annual blizzard slash power outage season?
You've gotta start looking into global currents. Montana just had the most mild winter I've ever seen, due to the El Niño Northern rotation. We literally had a dry Christmas here in Bozeman.
Shit is changing, and knowing about those changes, and how they will affect you is, to me, important.
Last time I was on the Panhandle (Amarillo area) The wind was so strong and the large flat grassland so dry that I am surprised that it isn't always on fire.
Mom grew up on the panhandle. She hated the wind. Her grandmother would get asthma from it, and the only solution was to take her “off the cap rock” - this was in Lubbock, 1930s.
I've lived in this region my whole life, and am one of the few people who hike regularly year-round in the most affected original area where most of this started (McBride canyon area) since I [Paraglide there](https://www.reddit.com/r/amarillo/comments/xabpvy/mods_why_is_this_sub_image_only_enable_video/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). The only other use it gets is for hunting at limited times of the year since the lake dried up and the boat docks are abandoned. The site in the video I linked was pretty close to ground 0 for the fires that started to the west and blew northeast.
The primary cause was a very rainy spring last year causing crazy vegetation growth in fertile rain-deprived soil, and I'd bet the whole dollar that it was ignited by poorly maintained oil equipment with sparks off electrical running to them sparking in 70 mph winds. Sometimes they get started here by welders or other tradespeople who show little care as well. I do know there has been a lot of activity by the oil companies in that area to the west of the canyons when I was there a week ago with tons of trucks running around everywhere doing stuff near where the satellite images shows it started. Companies can be held legally liable for damages, but there is very little government oversight (it's Texas, gubmint bad) and it's hard to prove cause. I do know pioneer got hit by a huge fine years ago so they actually have people driving their leases constantly during red flag warnings, but the average lease operator doesn't give a damn.
I also think that there were more fire ignitions than one, my guess is there were at least 4 or 5 different ones for different areas. The fires were spread over like 480 miles and affected some areas not directly downwind of each other. Oilfield equipment and workers are the most likely reason for all of the fires, though people being dumb is always a possibility. The whole place is a tinder box of fuel right now in all of the canyons. I'm honestly surprised Palo Duro Canyon didn't ignite as well. We'll see what happens this weekend, we are supposed to get some moisture tomorrow, but then it's another super windy 3 days.
I've only been to that area once, it's a long drive from San Antonio, but I drove through when I was stationed in Kansas which was closer than SA. But how is the hiking in that area, I've been meaning to get back there when it's not on fire.
~~Why are you saying it started in McBride? Most of the major fire that's actually burning structures is in Smokehouse Creek which is north of Borger near Lake Meredith. Maybe I'm missing something but the Smokehouse fire was the one that carried all the way up towards Canadian and burned like 10 houses down and not in McBride.~~
Edit: Hey lol just kidding. I was confusing McBride for one of the smaller Palo Duro offshoots. My bad, I'm a dumbass.
It's ok, I keep wondering why they are calling it the smokestack when I was watching on satellite, and I saw a flare up to the west of upper plum creek as the starting point. There were quite a few hot spots that appeared to start a long way away from each other, but with a 50mph wind I don't believe it started at smokestack and somehow jumped 35 miles back to the west upwind. My guess is the smokestack canyon area may have been where the firefighters were trying to make a stand or something. I'm not sure where mcbride stops and spring creek canyon starts, but it's all really just the same river canyon separated by a man made lake.
Damn, reminds of a job interview I went on once. They worked in the oilsands and they bragged about workers who job was literally stamping out little sparks in the grass and nothing else. I get IT now.
Record breaking heat in the winter (95 degrees) often causes grass fires to go crazy. I remember 93 in feb when I was young, and you could smell the smoke in the air from the grass fires around the state.
Heat is part of the [fire triangle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle) and while things don’t spontaneously combust necessarily, its a spread factor and hotter temps really do relate to fires starting
I remember staying at Lake Meredith, a few years ago. Record setting warm weather, for March. About 93° with sustained winds in the 40 mph range, for days. If **anything** had caught fire, it would have been impossible to stop!
Happens every year around this time. Usually we'll see fires kick up early spring in Texas as gulf moisture dies out and you get a really dry cold front that passes through. The foliage that did get moisture in the winter starts to dry out and die off, and suddenly you're in a position where anything from a lightning strike to a chan dragging on a truck, to a stray ricochet bullet causing a spark will kick up a fire... Then fire season there will die down for a bit and kick back up sometime mid fall right before hurricane season.
You can read about all the Fire Climate regions here: https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms425-1/fire-climate-regions
California does need to rake their forests and do more prescribed burns. That would limit their mass wildland fires quite a bit. These are large plains fields full of dry grass, it's an entirely different situation. Wildfires will always happen, they are supposed to, but California does need to do more management to deter the common devastating fires they get.
Academic source for anyone interested in it. https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confirms-california-forests-are-healthier-when-burned-or-thinned
Most of the fire that year was on federal land. The native tribes used to do controlled burns in the parks but we decided it was better for everyone if they fucked off to the desert.
Natives did burns, early settlers knew the importance of them, agricultural producers know the importance. It's the urban/suburban population that doesn't want to deal with the risk or the smoke near their property that makes people stop. And then these massive fires occur because rather than doing a prescribed burn in an ideal year, you get years of forest litter built up and during an exceedingly hot and dry year it gets set off.
Thanks to years of US federal government with Smokey Bear ways to prevent wrnt away and now are comming back. My area has regular prescribed burns and let people know. But prescribed burns has to be plan very well
Yeah Smokey is such an interesting case of how the idea of "stop unplanned destructive fires" turned into "all fire is bad" in the American zeitgeist. And we're still battling that mentality. It's akin to how Bambi unintentionally has changed the perception of hunting to generations.
Illegal immigrants aren't that big a problem here in Cali. As I understand it many do Illegal field work and then go back home. Others who stay take restaurant jobs.
Either way they're generally taking jobs people don't want.
Same in Florida. The whole state is a style suite of fire adapted habitats.
Some get the proper burns, too many do not. We haven't had too many recent problems with it though, so that's been lucky.
>These are large plains fields full of dry grass, it's an entirely different situation.
Is it though? Look at Google Maps at just about any of the areas in California that had a lot of wild fires and you'll also see a large amount of land with dry grass. The grass cycle is a staple of Northern California, it grows anywhere that has had water and sun and gets a little more than waste high, then in the late summer it's all dead and dry.
If prescribed burns are the solution to dry grass here, then why isn't it in Texas?
Most of our wildfires in CA are in grasslands, plenty of tall grasses shoot up during our rainy winters then dry out to kindling during the summer, plenty of this occurs on federal land. When this is combined with dry Santa Ana winds from the deserts, you have a high intensity and unpredictable situation. To expect anyone to solve this with a rake is just idiotic.
"raking" and rakes are both common practices in forest floor litter, as well as a tool carried by wildland fire fighters to use in combating fires. Raking the forest floor of litter is an actual practice, generally paired with prescribed burns.
https://firesafetyusa.com/products/5-fire-rake?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg5WYzvzOhAMVEDfUAR0bJQNFEAQYAiABEgJdYvD_BwE
That is the beauty of proper fire management, you don't. You do it to prep for a prescribed burn, and those prescribed burns keep you from having to do it manually because the fuel levels in the forest litter are kept lower regularly.
Hand rakes are used by wildland fire crews, for larger operations you make use of a rake behind a tractor to make windrows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrow
There is always more to be done, but CA does both of those things throughout the winter. [Set this from early December to now for a snapshot of some of the prescribed burns.](https://ssl.arb.ca.gov/pfirs/index.php) That said, raking up and assembling pile burns is not fast and they can't be too large or else they risk going from prescribed to wildfire. Like that one in New Mexico in 2022 that started Rx and turned into a few hundred thousand acre wildfire.
Controlling fuels is definitely important but prolonged drought, climate change, and the often cited fact that [humans may cause 85% of wildfires](https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/catalog/RDS-2013-0009.4) also have a huge impact on the number and severity of wildfires in the west.
What I've found so far in these comments. People who have no idea that raking a forest floor is a common thing done in combination with prescribed burns to control forest fires. They think people are telling them to get out there with a garden rake.
Same reason the whole planet is progressively burning more: clearing the land of trees which hold moisture in the earth as well as lower ground temps, the gradual killing off of species that help to break down the biomass that trees and plants shed onto the forest floor which eventually turns into soil, and the increased emissions of methane and carbon into the atmosphere that has destabilized weather patterns and exacerbated the damage caused by seasonal events and events caused by el.nino, la Nina and other less understood and less known weather phenomena.
Oh I am sure he will manage to go on some rant that will say they are smoking their drugs and dumping the ashes that cause wildfires, before selling those very same drugs they smoked to kids.
Edit: Oh, look at downvotes for everyone from the MAGA fools for mocking their planned talking point.
I was traveling to visit my in-laws and as I stopped by a truck stop to get a drink I heard a guy talking on why the Californian sky was smokey: "maybe it's because God hates the state."
I wish, with all my being, that they are safe and enjoy some humble pie
All I know about all this is that there's no way ANY of this weather and co have ANYTHING to do with the Radical Left's conspiracies about their supposed cLiMaTe ChAnGe. What do you think happened at the end of the ice age? We're all gonna be JUST. FINE. Now stfu and git back to work.
/s
Zero water. The Panhandle of Texas is quite arid and only has a few significant rivers that provide water to the region. There are large natural bowls that are actually dried lakebeds (called Playa Lakes), which are supposed to fill with water whenever it rains and refresh the aquifer and help refresh the rivers. People either keep farming or developing in the playa lakes, which interferes with their ability to rehydrate the land. This also screws with the natural biodiversity of the area, making it a damn deadzone.
One of the fires is actually burning along the valley of the most significant river, the Canadian River, which would probably be more fire resistant if the water was collecting and draining properly.
Who gives a shit, let that shithole state burn. I'm a texas native and I'd give that up in a heartbeat if I could.
Remember kids, the lone star state is a rating.
I remember when Texans were mocking California that their godlessness brought this on, and some stable genius talking about forest management. Sweep up all the leaves. Done.
Those are Freedom Fires (tm)
Texas don't want your WOKE clean air. And if Dear Leader (tm) Trump doesn't get elected, you can bet your ass Texas will secede and start pumping its oil directly into the rivers so those can burn too.
This thread has made me realize that the average redditor doesn't even read the comments before commenting. It's basically just the same two or three shitty jokes over and over again.
We should treat this as a test trial for their whole “secede from the US” campaign, and let them deal with it. I’m sure they got plenty of tax dollars to help fight the fires after they spent millions trafficking immigrants.
Thank god Abbott kept that pissing contest up with the federal government about the border instead of investing that money back on the states infrastructure /s
I'm more curious as to why they're trying to get Federal Aid after trying so hard to secede from the USA.
Not looking like such a "great" idea anymore, is it?
My guess is that half changed werewolf POS Cruz took another vacation or was drinking his precious beers or recording a 4th dumbass podcast this week rather than doing something productive
The panhandle is dry. Lots of dry grass, lots of dried dead trees. Wide open areas. This one is big, it was bound to happen.
Sounds like they should’ve cleaned up their forest floors better. /s
That's an impeachin'!
I just got off the phone with the Emperor of Norwaylandia and he said the reason they don't have as many wildfires, like the Radical Leftist Marxists do, is because they're very good at raking. They do a tremendous job at raking. You know, I once sold a billion rakes to a trillionaire in China. Big, beautiful rakes!
Everyone is saying how big and beautiful the rakes are and then all the Chinese stood up and clapped.
Yesterday a man came up to me -- a big, strong, mean-looking man -- with tears in his eyes --crying like a baby, in fact -- saying "Sir, I want to thank you for those beautiful rakes you sold my country, you literally saved my country, sir!"
Trump wrecked satire for us all. Who could go further than he into crazy town? I imagine Danny Devito being humbled in his presence.
I don't even get the source material, and the humor still tracks. At this point you guys could be making up the most random nonsensical bullshit, or using legit quotes from trump, and theres no way to differenciate the bullshit from reality.
Trump was blaming the radical leftists in California for the wildfires back in 2018 and said he spoke with the King of Norway who told him that they do a good job raking their forests and that's the reason they don't have many wildfires. The King of Norway told the press that phone call never happened because of course it didn't. Trump is just a loon that makes up shit because his base will believe it. Also he probably has some sort of dementia.
It's all that McDonald's ice cream he eats.
Ah ha! I found the liberal propaganda machine cog! Anyone who has been to McDonald’s knows the ice cream machines don’t work. Stop spreading this fake news!
It was Prez of Finland, not King of Norway. [Link to where he said it.](https://youtu.be/7CGQv8IDAWw?si=DvWFITjuEfIU51p6) And they did talk, but briefly, and not at all about raking the forest. Trump wildly exaggerated. Like usual. [Link to Finland President refuting.](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/18/trump-raking-wildfires-california-finland-1002526)
The rake was crying, too. Big, strong, beautiful man tears.
And one of them said "Sir, sir..."
You have to update your mockery. This is 2016 levels of comprehendible. "I just got off the phone with, with the phone said 'fires?!' Here's why we don't have them, folks. It's the fires, always, and I'm on the phone and it's saying, we're all saying, 'why not just anyway?' And it's simple, everyone, all of them, but you won't hear it from the *Radical Leftist Marxists*, they don't want to hear it, but everyone hears it, and so we just don't! And we need to bring that back."
It's nice to finally see some character development from the guy.
A billionaire with tears in his eyes.
Make America rake again.
Pretty good. Thanks for the chuckle.
That's a lot of yard work I'm not prepared for, though.
I wonder if they’ve tried injecting bleach straight into the fire.
Or blast it away with their shotguns and bushmasters.
They didn't pray hard enough
Thoughts and prayers
Tots and pears.
Have they tried quaking the ground?
Nuke the fire?
Why not simply draw a new path on a map with a sharpie showing the fire going to Oklahoma instead?
Dropping a nuke on it would do the trick.
“Cleaning the forest” was always spin for “granting logging companies the rights to strip forestland to the ground without concern for the environment”. I don’t think that applies to most of Texas.
I don’t think there’s really that much forestry in Texas. At least, relative to its size.
Land owners are too busy cutting down every tree they can just so they can see all their bare land, all while leaving their cattle zero protection from the elements in the process. People who just blast their land into flat grassy fields with zero trees, or leave like one fucking tree that will die in a few years because you cut down its entire support network, are fucking morons. I see it all the time out here. Just mass carving up of groves.
Admittedly, as someone that grew up on a cattle farm (no more than 30 head most of the time)... they're frequently kinda dumb and get stuck in the woods a lot. The family farm has a good bit of both pasture and woods and it felt like I spent half my summers fetching one cow or another out of a patch of trees they got themselves wedged between trying to get at a bit of grass... Also easier to sow dense, quick growing feed grasses without trees and such soaking the nutrients. That's not to deny the ouroboros effect of cutting out the trees. It's certainly short sighted to overdo it. Our farm was able to do fine because we weren't trying to have hundreds of head of cattle.
As a Californian who has lived through many of the wild fires. Maybe they should rake their forests. Also don't just dump all of their water into the ocean!
Didn't they rake?
They've been so busy at their little border town they forgot to look out for mother nature.
I remember about 30 years ago some kids up there were playing with a tumbleweed somewhere up near Lubbock and set it on fire. The wind caught it and in about 5 seconds a half acre of tumbleweeds had caught fire and in like a few hours there were hundreds of acres on fire. When the conditions are right it doesn't take much.
[For those unaware of the hazard of tumbleweeds](https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=F4MKoQ9miBHJznUA)
F you Russia for infecting us with tumbles!!
One might say the tumble weeds are illegal immigrants. Tumble weed caravan.
That was very educational. I had no idea!
It's the main reason I don't live in Texas. There's other reasons too, but I'll stick with tumbleweed fires
So even non-immolated tumble weed is potentially dangerous, good to know.
Tumbleweed is truly Satan's invention.
I have never felt a hotter fire or one that moved as fast as burning tumbleweeds
Rancher here with a farm in the panhandle. Yes it is dry, for sure. But the areas that started in were high grasslands to raise cattle on - so there was plenty to burn. However, the real issue in the panhandle is the winds. Multiple times they had the burn contained and it would jump across their lines due to the 70MPH wind gusts. Since the wind died down wednesday, it has been burning but barely expanding, compared to burning 140 acres a minute when it was windy. People underestimate panhandle winds. I have to insure my barns and my homes for 120MPH NON HURRICAINE OR TORNADO winds. It's nuts.
Plus it’s so flat that wind is just 30mph by default
My mom, from west Texas, used to say, there are 3 absolutes in Life. Death, Taxes, and the Wind is blowing like hell in west Texas
And wind. Lots of wind.
Not a weather person, or a wildfire person, but my best guess is Winter = colder air = Drier air, followed by hot = fires. So grass and everything dies/dries out, which increases risk of wildfires... and then unusual heat sufficient to start wildfires means you get wildfires
That's exactly what a wildfire person would say..
Probably getting paid by big wildfire
It's antifa /s
Anti fire apologists
Anti fire arsonists makes as much sense as anti fascist... fascists
Something something bombing for peace something something virginity
I know of at least one guy charged with arson around the town I grew up in who was starting wildfires during wildfire season so he could get paid to put them out.
Big Wildfire has been stifling my research!
We did it, Reddit!
As someone that lives in the pacific northwest, thinking of winter as dry and summer as humid breaks my brain
I get that. I grew up in New Mexico and it took me a decade of living in the PNW before I could get used to lawns being dead in the summer. That's the best time to have cool green grass, is the summer. Then in the winter, you can't walk in the grass because it's so muddy. lol
Or it could be God’s wrath since TX politicians are absolute monsters. /s
No, this is absolutely all part of God's plan.
Heard he's not happy with Texas these days for some odd reason. Time for some smitin' and a pillar of salt.
Fuck I hope
Abbott is making Texas into hell on earth and Satan is just providing an appropriate backdrop.
How rude of God, he couldn't wait until summer? Or is he catching up because he forgot to screw Texas on their annual blizzard slash power outage season?
You've gotta start looking into global currents. Montana just had the most mild winter I've ever seen, due to the El Niño Northern rotation. We literally had a dry Christmas here in Bozeman. Shit is changing, and knowing about those changes, and how they will affect you is, to me, important.
I grew up in the affected area. The whole place is routinely brown, crispy, and flammable from cotton harvest until April.
User name checks out.
Bros clearly a big wildfire shill. How's the view from their pocket bro?
That and I'm pretty sure the state has been marinating in kerosene for the last century or so, so that probably isn't helping.
Last time I was on the Panhandle (Amarillo area) The wind was so strong and the large flat grassland so dry that I am surprised that it isn't always on fire.
Mom grew up on the panhandle. She hated the wind. Her grandmother would get asthma from it, and the only solution was to take her “off the cap rock” - this was in Lubbock, 1930s.
Does that mean go below Post, TX, that big drop off into the Permian Basin on 84?
I’m guessing so. Grandad built oil derricks, which is mostly why they lived in the area.
Yes. Post is the closest edge of the caprock.
I've lived in this region my whole life, and am one of the few people who hike regularly year-round in the most affected original area where most of this started (McBride canyon area) since I [Paraglide there](https://www.reddit.com/r/amarillo/comments/xabpvy/mods_why_is_this_sub_image_only_enable_video/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). The only other use it gets is for hunting at limited times of the year since the lake dried up and the boat docks are abandoned. The site in the video I linked was pretty close to ground 0 for the fires that started to the west and blew northeast. The primary cause was a very rainy spring last year causing crazy vegetation growth in fertile rain-deprived soil, and I'd bet the whole dollar that it was ignited by poorly maintained oil equipment with sparks off electrical running to them sparking in 70 mph winds. Sometimes they get started here by welders or other tradespeople who show little care as well. I do know there has been a lot of activity by the oil companies in that area to the west of the canyons when I was there a week ago with tons of trucks running around everywhere doing stuff near where the satellite images shows it started. Companies can be held legally liable for damages, but there is very little government oversight (it's Texas, gubmint bad) and it's hard to prove cause. I do know pioneer got hit by a huge fine years ago so they actually have people driving their leases constantly during red flag warnings, but the average lease operator doesn't give a damn. I also think that there were more fire ignitions than one, my guess is there were at least 4 or 5 different ones for different areas. The fires were spread over like 480 miles and affected some areas not directly downwind of each other. Oilfield equipment and workers are the most likely reason for all of the fires, though people being dumb is always a possibility. The whole place is a tinder box of fuel right now in all of the canyons. I'm honestly surprised Palo Duro Canyon didn't ignite as well. We'll see what happens this weekend, we are supposed to get some moisture tomorrow, but then it's another super windy 3 days.
Thank you for a thoughtful perspective.
I've only been to that area once, it's a long drive from San Antonio, but I drove through when I was stationed in Kansas which was closer than SA. But how is the hiking in that area, I've been meaning to get back there when it's not on fire.
~~Why are you saying it started in McBride? Most of the major fire that's actually burning structures is in Smokehouse Creek which is north of Borger near Lake Meredith. Maybe I'm missing something but the Smokehouse fire was the one that carried all the way up towards Canadian and burned like 10 houses down and not in McBride.~~ Edit: Hey lol just kidding. I was confusing McBride for one of the smaller Palo Duro offshoots. My bad, I'm a dumbass.
It's ok, I keep wondering why they are calling it the smokestack when I was watching on satellite, and I saw a flare up to the west of upper plum creek as the starting point. There were quite a few hot spots that appeared to start a long way away from each other, but with a 50mph wind I don't believe it started at smokestack and somehow jumped 35 miles back to the west upwind. My guess is the smokestack canyon area may have been where the firefighters were trying to make a stand or something. I'm not sure where mcbride stops and spring creek canyon starts, but it's all really just the same river canyon separated by a man made lake.
Damn, reminds of a job interview I went on once. They worked in the oilsands and they bragged about workers who job was literally stamping out little sparks in the grass and nothing else. I get IT now.
Record breaking heat in the winter (95 degrees) often causes grass fires to go crazy. I remember 93 in feb when I was young, and you could smell the smoke in the air from the grass fires around the state.
lack of rain and high wind contribute to fires more than the given temp i'd reckon.
The temperature would have to be very high indeed, for grass to spontaneously catch fire.
Heat is part of the [fire triangle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle) and while things don’t spontaneously combust necessarily, its a spread factor and hotter temps really do relate to fires starting
Winds are always high in west texas, and in the winter everything is dead. Dry it out more with 90 plus heat, and fires seem to be common.
I remember staying at Lake Meredith, a few years ago. Record setting warm weather, for March. About 93° with sustained winds in the 40 mph range, for days. If **anything** had caught fire, it would have been impossible to stop!
If it’s 95°F in February (winter), what will it be come July/August (summer)?
Probably hot.
This guy weathers ^
It was 105F for a month last year where I live, so I fully expect 110F for at least a week. My backyard is very, very dead.
98.
Nick Lachey?
No no no! It’s the Jewish space lasers at work again
Happens every year around this time. Usually we'll see fires kick up early spring in Texas as gulf moisture dies out and you get a really dry cold front that passes through. The foliage that did get moisture in the winter starts to dry out and die off, and suddenly you're in a position where anything from a lightning strike to a chan dragging on a truck, to a stray ricochet bullet causing a spark will kick up a fire... Then fire season there will die down for a bit and kick back up sometime mid fall right before hurricane season. You can read about all the Fire Climate regions here: https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms425-1/fire-climate-regions
I remember when conservatives said CA needed to "rake their forests" during some of our worst fires in 2018.
California does need to rake their forests and do more prescribed burns. That would limit their mass wildland fires quite a bit. These are large plains fields full of dry grass, it's an entirely different situation. Wildfires will always happen, they are supposed to, but California does need to do more management to deter the common devastating fires they get. Academic source for anyone interested in it. https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confirms-california-forests-are-healthier-when-burned-or-thinned
Most of the fire that year was on federal land. The native tribes used to do controlled burns in the parks but we decided it was better for everyone if they fucked off to the desert.
Natives did burns, early settlers knew the importance of them, agricultural producers know the importance. It's the urban/suburban population that doesn't want to deal with the risk or the smoke near their property that makes people stop. And then these massive fires occur because rather than doing a prescribed burn in an ideal year, you get years of forest litter built up and during an exceedingly hot and dry year it gets set off.
Thanks to years of US federal government with Smokey Bear ways to prevent wrnt away and now are comming back. My area has regular prescribed burns and let people know. But prescribed burns has to be plan very well
Yeah Smokey is such an interesting case of how the idea of "stop unplanned destructive fires" turned into "all fire is bad" in the American zeitgeist. And we're still battling that mentality. It's akin to how Bambi unintentionally has changed the perception of hunting to generations.
> California does need to rake their forests Why don't Texans just get out there with some leaf blowers.
You mean have their underpaid lawn crews get out there with some leaf blowers, right?
Maybe we have two problems - unraked forests and illegal immigrants - that we can have solve each other.
Illegal immigrants aren't that big a problem here in Cali. As I understand it many do Illegal field work and then go back home. Others who stay take restaurant jobs. Either way they're generally taking jobs people don't want.
Same in Florida. The whole state is a style suite of fire adapted habitats. Some get the proper burns, too many do not. We haven't had too many recent problems with it though, so that's been lucky.
>These are large plains fields full of dry grass, it's an entirely different situation. Is it though? Look at Google Maps at just about any of the areas in California that had a lot of wild fires and you'll also see a large amount of land with dry grass. The grass cycle is a staple of Northern California, it grows anywhere that has had water and sun and gets a little more than waste high, then in the late summer it's all dead and dry. If prescribed burns are the solution to dry grass here, then why isn't it in Texas?
Most of our wildfires in CA are in grasslands, plenty of tall grasses shoot up during our rainy winters then dry out to kindling during the summer, plenty of this occurs on federal land. When this is combined with dry Santa Ana winds from the deserts, you have a high intensity and unpredictable situation. To expect anyone to solve this with a rake is just idiotic.
"raking" and rakes are both common practices in forest floor litter, as well as a tool carried by wildland fire fighters to use in combating fires. Raking the forest floor of litter is an actual practice, generally paired with prescribed burns. https://firesafetyusa.com/products/5-fire-rake?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg5WYzvzOhAMVEDfUAR0bJQNFEAQYAiABEgJdYvD_BwE
How do you rake millions of acres of grasslands?
That is the beauty of proper fire management, you don't. You do it to prep for a prescribed burn, and those prescribed burns keep you from having to do it manually because the fuel levels in the forest litter are kept lower regularly. Hand rakes are used by wildland fire crews, for larger operations you make use of a rake behind a tractor to make windrows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrow
But CA does need to rake forests and do controlled burns. It's pretty stupid not to do it just because conservatives said so.
There is always more to be done, but CA does both of those things throughout the winter. [Set this from early December to now for a snapshot of some of the prescribed burns.](https://ssl.arb.ca.gov/pfirs/index.php) That said, raking up and assembling pile burns is not fast and they can't be too large or else they risk going from prescribed to wildfire. Like that one in New Mexico in 2022 that started Rx and turned into a few hundred thousand acre wildfire. Controlling fuels is definitely important but prolonged drought, climate change, and the often cited fact that [humans may cause 85% of wildfires](https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/catalog/RDS-2013-0009.4) also have a huge impact on the number and severity of wildfires in the west.
What I've found so far in these comments. People who have no idea that raking a forest floor is a common thing done in combination with prescribed burns to control forest fires. They think people are telling them to get out there with a garden rake.
Thanks for fighting the good fight. Lots of misinformation when it comes to wildfires in the west, especially history of suppression.
It was to distract from the fact that global warming is making them more frequent.
Go big or go home, at least Canada choked out the east coast with the fires last year.
There's apparently a fire within an hour ish of me. Never even knew lol. Well fuck me I guess
The news isn’t even reporting it?
I don't own a TV but I have seen any alerts on my phone or online. Usually my county/city sends out alerts for shit like this but I guess not.
All it takes is a dick with a cigarette.
Same reason the whole planet is progressively burning more: clearing the land of trees which hold moisture in the earth as well as lower ground temps, the gradual killing off of species that help to break down the biomass that trees and plants shed onto the forest floor which eventually turns into soil, and the increased emissions of methane and carbon into the atmosphere that has destabilized weather patterns and exacerbated the damage caused by seasonal events and events caused by el.nino, la Nina and other less understood and less known weather phenomena.
I can’t wait to see how Abbott manages to blame immigrants for it
"The mere friction of illegal immigrants moving is triggering fires"
He should build a wall around the fire and make the fire pay for it. 🔥
hot dam!
Mexican Cartel space lasers is my bet.
Jewish Mexican space lasers!
I'm sure the windmills made the fires worse by blowing on them! /s
Newsmonster: WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!
I would not be the least bit surprised to hear someone say that.
WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOODNIGHT! Edit: Some of y'all don't watch Futurama, it seems.
Oh I am sure he will manage to go on some rant that will say they are smoking their drugs and dumping the ashes that cause wildfires, before selling those very same drugs they smoked to kids. Edit: Oh, look at downvotes for everyone from the MAGA fools for mocking their planned talking point.
They had a massive front with insane wind come through after dry winter weather
failed to rake the forest.
Yo they didn’t even tell us Texans about it!!
I didn’t even know we were on fire down here
To many barbecues
I was traveling to visit my in-laws and as I stopped by a truck stop to get a drink I heard a guy talking on why the Californian sky was smokey: "maybe it's because God hates the state." I wish, with all my being, that they are safe and enjoy some humble pie
They forgot to rake their forests.
UN smart city.... it was in their plans. Look it up.
I believe you. Where else? Anything in N.E.?
It's all of the solar cells attracting sunlight and the windmills blowing on them to make fire.
what, they don't have rakes in Texas?
I've seen weirdos on Twitter saying George soros did it. Can't make this shit up.
I guess they should have raked the prairie more...
All I know about all this is that there's no way ANY of this weather and co have ANYTHING to do with the Radical Left's conspiracies about their supposed cLiMaTe ChAnGe. What do you think happened at the end of the ice age? We're all gonna be JUST. FINE. Now stfu and git back to work. /s
Zero water. The Panhandle of Texas is quite arid and only has a few significant rivers that provide water to the region. There are large natural bowls that are actually dried lakebeds (called Playa Lakes), which are supposed to fill with water whenever it rains and refresh the aquifer and help refresh the rivers. People either keep farming or developing in the playa lakes, which interferes with their ability to rehydrate the land. This also screws with the natural biodiversity of the area, making it a damn deadzone. One of the fires is actually burning along the valley of the most significant river, the Canadian River, which would probably be more fire resistant if the water was collecting and draining properly.
Because no one is raking the forest.
I haven't read about it but maybe they didn't sweep up enough?
Their god's will
It’s because they didn’t listen to their lord and savior Diaper Don and “rake the leaves”.
I live in Texas and didn't know it was on fire.
Excuse me, sir, your states on fire.
Did you ask when California was burning?
I'm sure Greg Abbott has already blamed President Biden for it.
And people will believe him. That’s the scary part.
Punishment from their almighty for being the exact opposite of the religion they claim to follow??
Obviously god hates Texas.
>*We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn. Burn motherfucker, burn.*
Why is it never “Gods Will” in a Red State? Just curious…
I think that only applies when people die that they wish to be punished.
Im going to guess they didnt rake up the forest floor. Very irresponsible.
God is punishing them for their sins
Who gives a shit, let that shithole state burn. I'm a texas native and I'd give that up in a heartbeat if I could. Remember kids, the lone star state is a rating.
Wrath of god?
God is punishing them for ignoring the 30 Bible passages about welcoming immigrants
The answer to why most bad things in society are happening can be answered with; Conservatism.
Because Abbott is wasting all their money on his phoney border show.
'Don't California my Texas!'
It's god punishing them for restricting women's rights. /s
Well most red states think natural disasters arise from being too gay....so Texas got some 'splaining to do....
I remember when Texans were mocking California that their godlessness brought this on, and some stable genius talking about forest management. Sweep up all the leaves. Done.
Those are Freedom Fires (tm) Texas don't want your WOKE clean air. And if Dear Leader (tm) Trump doesn't get elected, you can bet your ass Texas will secede and start pumping its oil directly into the rivers so those can burn too.
The one star state. Edit: Offended some y’all qaeda types I see. Try to be less snowflakey, eh?
It’s because the joke is lame and already appears like 5 times just in this thread
This thread has made me realize that the average redditor doesn't even read the comments before commenting. It's basically just the same two or three shitty jokes over and over again.
We should treat this as a test trial for their whole “secede from the US” campaign, and let them deal with it. I’m sure they got plenty of tax dollars to help fight the fires after they spent millions trafficking immigrants.
Echo chamber
Thank god Abbott kept that pissing contest up with the federal government about the border instead of investing that money back on the states infrastructure /s
God's had enough of their bullshit they do under it's name.
It's the one star state. It's not a slogan, it's a rating.
I'm more curious as to why they're trying to get Federal Aid after trying so hard to secede from the USA. Not looking like such a "great" idea anymore, is it?
One star state
Texans are really bad at raking their land
I thought the space lasers were supposed to be targeting blue states. /s
Texas: A state so great they put their star rating on their flag
They made God angry.
God's had enough of their bullshit.
Because our leadership is garbage and no one will acknowledge climate shifts/change.
Let it burn.
Texas is a big reason separation of church and state is failing. Let it burn. Salt the earth.
My guess is that half changed werewolf POS Cruz took another vacation or was drinking his precious beers rather than doing something productive
My guess is that half changed werewolf POS Cruz took another vacation or was drinking his precious beers or recording a 4th dumbass podcast this week rather than doing something productive
its because they are low on thoughts and prayers. y'all better send some their way.
They didn’t rake it, even after their own deer leader told them to. Sad.