by Phil » Wed Jul 25, 2018 7:06 am
They are making some progress, but it's still going to take quite a bit of time. I don't want to be flippant at all in dismissing the tremendous efforts so far, but they're coming into where the easier containment that's led to the gains is about done, and it's now coming to a point where reliance upon what they've established ahead of the perimeter is going to mean everything. Fire breaks, backburns, hoselines, roads, already recently burned areas...sheer manpower and assets, are all going to be critical. We can just hope that they all hold.
The other problems are going to be the temperatures and fuels. Way hot this week. Still no shortage of ground fuel to burn. What's also happening is that the high pressure system that's created an inversion layer (and largely responsible for all the smoke staying low) is collapsing. When there's smoke, which is really just particulates, it displaces the other fuel component a fire needs to burn, oxygen. High pressure goes away, inversion layer lifts, smoke lifts, more oxygen available, fire burns hotter and faster. The next few days are going to be important, and hard on firefighters. Wish them well, wait and see.