Fires-Oregon

In NO way am I trying to minimize what California is experiencing and, if anything, this thread is about coming to a greater level of understanding about their collective experience. There are real deal fires up in Oregon and in the Willamette Valley as we speak. Hot temps, super dry conditions and nearly unimaginable winds of up to 65 MPH drove things over the past 24 hours. While in no danger here is what it looks like outside the winery right now.


That doesn’t capture how yellow it looks outside right now. There are big fires East of Salem and I think Highway 22 from Salem to Bend is closed down. The guy semi-trucking wine out of the winery today had to bail after 2 loads because he needed to evacuate.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.opb.org/article/2020/09/08/evacuations-along-highway-22-as-oregon-fires-spread-quickly-monday-night/%3foutputType=amp

We have never had anything like this, not in my 25+ years out here doing this.

We didn’t have power to our well and water reservoir pumps this morning although we had power everywhere else however none of that power is 3 phase. Hoping it will be on by tomorrow (as advertised) so we can run the sorting line and destemmer. I know Beaux Freres has Chardonnay in the press with 2-3 loads more to do yesterday when their lights went out.

Again, I am not stating what we are experiencing is anything in relation to CA shit but I can tell you that going through 2% of what they are having to contend with is awful.

Everyone be safe out there.

I just saw this on FB. Hope you guys aren’t impacted by these fires and that they’re brought under control soon.

Sorry to hear Jim. be safe up there. Windstorms rolled through Utah last night and today and caused all sorts of havoc here. Can’t wait for this year to be over…

Sean

Wow! Scary Jim. Looks like much of the Willamette, from Eola-Amity to Tualitin, could be impacted. Hopefully not!

RT

2020 @ it again. :frowning:

My mother was evacuated out of Ashland, OR at the southern end of the state. Fires inside the city limits. Pretty high density small town that is dry as it gets. She’s just on a road with LOTS of other people trying to figure out what to do and where to go.

I don’t think up here we’re in any imminent danger. It is supposed to be upper 90s next two days so if these hot eastern winds persist that statement could age poorly quickly. It’s not very windy now but neither was it this morning and it kicked back up.

Never seen anything like this here in Yamhill county.

Be safe and sending positive thoughts and prayers . . .

I heard Portland lost power last night?

Personally I don’t think you guys have to minimize what you’re going through even if the scale is smaller than CA. Fires are scary no matter where they are.

Sorry to hear about the fires up there. The best (imo, of course) fire map/imaging website right now is:

Very well thought out & laid out website. This includes options for both VIIRS and Modus…the two best satellite fire imaging (note, there’s some sort of problem with Modus at the moment, so that’s turned off by default…you can turn it on to see it doesn’t work tho!).

They have a snazzy bar at the bottom to look at the fire images for prior days. Note: by default, it displays the merged results for two day periods, mostly so nothing is missed as the latest image is updated, I assume. You can change this to 1 day (or 3+ days if you’d like), esp useful if you’re looking at prior days. There are a bunch of other nice features as well.

Best of all, it’s not massively slow like the Google Earth plug-in’s are.

Looking south across our DUX Vineyard toward DUndee Hills. The sky is a lot darker than what the photo represents. Winds still quite strong, albeit less than this morning. Very eerie- reminds me of the eclipse when the light dimmed during the event.
ACAAA559-7B80-49DF-BB6B-C46D02281CD8.jpeg

Yes. Be safe.

Stay safe everyone.

4A91BCFC-08BA-471F-8712-7A6B328C38A1.jpeg
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Couple of photos between 4:30-5:00 this eve. Actually got cool with the sun blocked.

The sky was all purple
There were people runnin’ everywhere.

All fingers crossed for those of you out there. May you come through this unscathed.

Many of you know Tom Wark. Here’s the picture he posted from his house in Salem today. I thought we had ugly smoke in Napa until I saw this.
Oregonfire.jpg

Hope the winds die down, those are very dangerous. Do you smell smoke? Looks like it’s mostly up high.

-Al

East of Salem is where a LOT of the fire acreage is at. I decided not to go look at fruit at Freedom Hill Vineyard today just to be on the safe side. They’re 10 miles SW Of Salem but who the hell knows or wants to be caught in some sort of situation that could have been avoided by staying away? It’s scary and crazy. Evacuations are happening all over Yamhill County right now.

Drama queen…

This statement may age poorly too. Winds are down now but are supposed to persist through tomorrow. Lots of people with no power. And timing is terrible, but right now things could be a LOT worse.

Eola-Amity(Salem) is rough. Power is out and fire mapping is in the red. But as is noted in the CA thread, topography will create a range of outcomes.

Also, according to Paul Gordon’s rule of thumb, distance from the fires to the vineyards is well beyond where a short term exposure would taint the vineyard. That said, wind speeds have been very high for the WV, and maybe that will make an impact.
Winds at Whistling Ridge brought in smoke from the north yesterday, which would be Columbia gorge for the source. Today a fire erupted near Hagg Lake and the freak high winds are pushing that smoke out to sea. East winds die down tomorrow, and it’s likely these fires will still be burning, so smoke may settle.

We’ll see but so far smoke around the vineyards has been high. That said, I wasn’t in Eola-Amity yesterday.