The fire is now about 10 miles from the ranch. The whole watershed/wilderness will go up in smoke before the July rains come. Once the rains come there will be epic flooding.
It is sickening to see this happen. On one hand it is just nature taking its course. On the other hand we and the way we live and the sights we are accustomed to seeing are in the way and are destroyed.
We went through this last year about this time in our county and again in September. We did manage to get the only DC-10 / large aerial tanker in operating to come in in September. It truly did save our bacon.
USFS Fire Team from California said it was probably the hottest fire they had ever seen. So dry and so much fuel in SE Texas. Our place was spared, many were not. 10 miles can be a long way. It got within a tenth of a mile from us. We had embers in the yard big as the end of my finger.
Wish you well. The country side will be devastated. Ponderosa pines are made for fire. I can’t recall the specie there.
Just looking at the InciWeb.
“Fire was extremely active in the areas of the firing operations. Torching, spotting and sustained runs were observed where topography and fuels aligned. Spotting distances were reported up to 1/3 mile. Flame lengths of 2-4ft in the ponderosa pine and 8-12ft in the mixed conifer were prevalent.”
We had flames over 100’ high. They told us anything over about 6’ was impossible to fight even with aerial tankers. It got so hot that the headlight lenses on the brush pump trucks would melt before the firefighters would withdraw. We had spotting up to a mile if I recall correctly. We also had 105 degree days.
You have lots of people on this fire at nearly 1,300. We finally had about 1,500 though.