Sunday, July 6, 2014

Skyline Fire, July 6, 2014, Wenatchee, Washington

Skyline Fire, July 6, 2014, Wenatchee, Washington

These are my personal photos and are copyrighted.  Permission must be granted before use.  I am NOT working on this fire.

This blog posting is the progression of the Skyline Fire as viewed from Burch Mountain looking across the Wenatchee Valley.  I first noticed the fire when awoken by our cat.  It seems he fell off the "gangplank" that leads to the bedroom deck.  He is an old cat.

Without my glasses on, I saw some new "lights" across the valley and pretty quickly knew what it meant.

The official start of the fire was at 02:15 am.  My first picture was at 02:34 am. You can see how quickly a fire moves in light fuels.


This second photo is eight minutes later at 02:42 am.  I did change exposures slightly between the two photos.  If you look closely between the two photos you can see how quickly the fire is moving.


This photo is 03:26 am.  Notice the hot spot at the upper end of the picture.


The photo was taken at 04:16 am.  At this point the fire is starting to move west in a more aggressive manner.  When the fire started there were significant winds down valley.  I suspect at this point the down valley winds were starting to abate.


This photo is just 14 minutes later.  Dawn is breaking.


The photo at 05:30.


This is at 06:46 am.  


At 08:25 am.  At this point the first acreage estimate was announced at 400 acres.  The Chelan County #1 helicopter was flying the fire at this point.


At 09:29 am.  At the left side of the picture there is a dense, while streak.  That is the Chelan County #1 helicopter dropping water.


At 11:06 am.  Update acreage to between 300 and 400 acres.  There are two DNR helicopters working the fire.  The Incident Commander sounded optimistic on the radio interview.  Higher westerly winds predicted for around 5:00 pm tonight.  If lines hold through that it should be looking fairly well.

The Incident Commander did mention that fires started by fireworks in Douglas County limited the number of personnel available immediately for this fire.

Good job, catching this fire quickly.  I started the photo sequence and left "plenty" of room for it to grow on the photo's.  Good thing, I did not need it!!!!



More photo's will be posted on an hourly basis.  As noted all photo's copyrighted and can be used only with permission.

2 comments:

Nan said...

Nice coverage. You sure had an Eagle's view, didn't you.

Vladimir Steblina said...

Thanks to the cat for waking me up!

It was a nice set of photo's showing the fire progression.

I am off to the Mills Canyon Fire....the blog might become a fire blog for the next couple months.

Hopefully, we can hit the road after the patch of fires.