High Sierra Topix

I just left the sierra due to too much smoke for my taste. There was smoke in the air pretty much my whole drive home from bishop to santa cruz. While out in the mountains you couldn't really see too much smoke in your direct vicinity but as soon as you got any view of distance peaks you can see there is a lot of smoke in the air. I like to take photos so when the sun sets and rises into the smoke it pretty much takes all the best light. Just FYI

My son in law is a firefighter, He says almost all of the early season fires have been arson. For what it's worth.

Appears the Soberanes fire will continue to put smoke into the California atmosphere for another 40 days at least. The below news link has quite a lot of information on the fire fighting strategy of letting it burn. Suspect the end of September date is really just when they expect an early cold front might put some rain on it.

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/california/ ... source=rss

Also apparently a lot of the firefighters have succumbed to the evil itch.

Firefighters battling wildfires on the Los Padres National Forest have more to contend with than just heat, flames, smoke and hazardous terrain. There is another enemy lurking in their midst: the all too familiar poison oak. Poison oak is prevalent in most areas on the forest and some firefighters are saying it is the worst they have even seen. Five hundred firefighters have reported to the fire’s medial units for poison oak related ailments with 200 cases in the past three days.

about time they just let something burn that needs to burn. And that should mean they're not in it's way inhaling the PO fumes.. A really bad thing...

With our Labor Day weekend approaching, I am now barely hanging on the fence about committing to my own plans of going into Dusy Basin. The air clarity is generally mildly smoky across the whole central and southern Sierra Nevada as one ca see on this map.

http://wxshift.com/news/us-wildfires-one-map

Note turn off the Satellite overlay to better view smoke areas. The jetstream forecasts for later next week continue to show a general westerly flow especially now since a trough dropping out of the Gulf of Alaska will be setting up across the northern areas with the southern extent still unclear. If it moves further south than expected, that could push smoke from Monterey County fires further south than the central Sierra. And for sunset, smoke from fires on the coast would dim sunset light just like we saw a few weeks ago.

There is also a new lightning caused fire near Frog Lake in the Mokelumne River basin that they plan to let burn. That fire and the still burning Horseshoe and Cedar fires down south in Sequoia NF will keep Owens Valley air very dirty that each day will suck air up the canyons likely making afternoon east side photography lousy.

Snippet from Howard S:

http://mammothweather.com/

End of August and Labor Day Weekend Outlook:

The 2nd half of next week looks a bit cooler and breezy as the first fall like trough settle’s into the Great Basin over the holiday weekend. The ECMWF probably has the right idea with Eastern CA on the back side of this weather system bringing cooler weather with highs in the 60s at resort levels and nights in the 30s. The Dweebs will have an update on the pattern change next week….

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The result of the above is that I am likely to cancel my 6-day Dusy reservation and instead at most wing it just doing a holiday weekend road trip with day hiking up near Tioga Pass in order to catch some fall leaf color from dwarf bilberry and arctic willow. Thus am thinking about making an early dawn headlamp departure from the Mono Pass trailhead just with camera gear up the 4.5 miles to Spillway Lake. And then on another morning do the shortcut from Virgin Dome up to Lower Cathedral Lake.

Can anyone recommend an area in the Sierra Nevada that is free of smoke. I plan an eight day trip into the high country beginning this Thursday, Sept 1. From the reports here on HST the entire Sierra Nevada is smoked out. According to the Forest Service smoke map, Yosemite looks to be okay.

Any info or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Peace.

Balance - note that the smoke is mostly a light haze in most areas right now. Bad for photos, but doesn't seem to be causing much respiratory distress. I'm not seeing any smoke areas as dense as last year.

Just cancelled my Treasure Lakes reservation for this coming Wednesday August 31. Thus frees up another slot for one person. Of note the smoke conditions map does not look as bad versus a few days ago but then a breezy period is forecast over the next few days as the noted trough digs down from the northwest so that could cause smoke to increase.

I must be missing it. I looked on the Ca fire map and saw a couple of fires along the coast, up towards Tahoe and down by Isabella, but didn't see any fires that would effect the sierra. All this talk of cancelling trips due to smoke has me a little concerned.

I must be missing it. I looked on the Ca fire map and saw a couple of fires along the coast, up towards Tahoe and down by Isabella, but didn't see any fires that would effect the sierra. All this talk of cancelling trips due to smoke has me a little concerned.

It is not about the fires being in the Sierra, it is about the large fires like the Soberanes, Cedar, and Rey Fires that have a lot of smoke emanating from them be and if the prevailing winds direction is towards the Sierra, it will create less than ideal conditions. Over the weekend we had smokey condition in the Bay Area and have had for quite a few days before that.
https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/aqmonitoring.htm
http://californiasmokeinfo.blogspot.com/