Person flew into Fort McMurray for work yesterday, here's his view from the plane.

[leftcoastmountains]

[malthaussen]

2. Naw, that's got to be Beijing. n/t

[Punx]

3. Pyrocumulus

And damn big ones at that. That's a sign of an intense fire. And not a good one of course.

[Plucketeer]

4. And we can count on...

seeing MORE of this sorta thing as the climate changes.

[Punx]

6. Indeed!

We had one (pyrocumulus) here in the Northern Coast Range of Oregon (essentially rain forest) in September of 2014, an indicator of extreme fire behavior and pretty much unheard of around here. I know State Foresters here and that fire scared the crap out of them, but they did a great job of fighting it. That fire burned within about 3.5 miles of my wife's family's place.

Then we had another serious fire about 15-20 miles north in August 2015. A Red Flag warning that proceeding January (middle of the wet season here) and big fires in the Olympics which is UNHEARD of.

Hopefully the wet winter will damp things down this summer, but right now we are back to record warmth and dry. I worry that we are going to have a repeat of the Tillamook fires one of these years.

[Fuddnik]

5. Nothing like the smell of tar sands burning in the morning.