Trip to to the Cabin, Fire at day 5

Today is going to be a bad day up north. There is a "red flag" warning from the national weather service warning of high winds, hot temperature, and low humidity on the gunflint. The wind is reported to be shifting towards being North Westerly this afternoon, with gusts around 30-40 mph. If this does happen, thats about as windy as it ever gets up there. A NW wind is the worst news for places like Gunflint Lodge that now lies directly in the fires path. I have added a blue wind arrow to my Google map of the fire, and that should also roughly show where the fire is moving. I have also added a orange and red patch to indicate where I think the controlled burn took place based on reports (see below).

There is good news to report today however. As I mentioned, yesterday they did a rather remarkable and spectacular prescribed burn just a mile ahead of the advancing fire in an attempt to stop it from reaching the populated area around Gunflint lake. They cut lines and laid sprinkler hose and then around 6:00 PM dropped fire bombs into the area just inside the two lines and then directed the fire towards the middle. It worked too, so hopefully when the fire does reach this area it will be starved for fuel.

Also today, my Dad has decided to drive up to the cabin to get our own sprinkler system up and running, as well as our neighbors. He was planning to go up on monday normally, but events up there are getting a little to unpredictable so this will at least make every one feel better. Like I keep saying, 100% survival rate so far for structures with sprinklers. The photo on the left is what I am talking about. We installed those sprinklers in 2000 after the big 99' blow-down (thanks FEMA of old) and it consists of a water pump by the lake that runs on gas and propane, that pumps water into a network of pipes that runs out to hoses that connect to dozens of those sprinkler heads that are attached to buildings and on stakes through out the woods. When we were installing it we made fun of them, 'going golfing in the woods!,' 'at least the lawn will look good' (what lawn) and so on. But what they do is create a "dome of humidity" around the area so that the fire literally passes around and over (think floating hot ash) the area protected. It also soaks deep into the fuel around the area if you have time to run it for a few days before hand, so the material wont get dried out by the intense heat of the fire. This is another reason its good my Dad is headed up now, so he can run the system now just incase either this fire jumps miles due to wind spotting ash, or a new fire starts for some unknown reason. Better safe than sorry!

Behavior Core

We finished our last big exam on Monday this week (Physiology is over!!), and started Behavior Core. Behavior is normally spread out over the semester, but because our professor was out on maternity leave, it got squished into a single week of five 8-to-4 days. It's a little hard paying attention to the same subject for that long, but at least behavior is really interesting. Today we talked about canine aggressive behavior towards humans and towards other animals, which was scary and sad. The saddest part was talking about kids who get bitten. After looking at gruesome pictures of dog bites and statistics of how often people get bitten by dogs, our professor thankfully offset it with this video:



Tomorrow we're talking about canine anxiety problems, which I'm definitely interested in (I think we could use Winnie as a case study...). I will post what I learn here!

Fire update

Alright, as of 2:00 a new map of the fire was relesed and it is growing larger to the east, the worst direction it could go but also the most predictable. As of now it is getting within striking distance of Gunflint lodge and other iconic destinations. Word is that winds are steady at around 15mph, and there is no real rain in sight.

I have made a Google Map to give every one reference to where some things are relative to this fire. If you click on the link, you will see a large area in red, that is the location of the current Ham lake fire. The area in yellow is the fire that alarmed every one last year. If you click on the way points you will find Gunflint lodge to the west, trail center in the middle, and our cabin on the left. As you can see, the fire would have to consume a large amount of area to even start to become a real threat to our land. As always, the real threat lies for us in a fire not yet started, but thats a different story.

This fire, and the larger fires of 2005 and 2006, shows that there are only 2 ways to effectively stop a fire in an area like the BWCA - if the fire runs into an already burned area, or rain. The best we can do is burn little pachas (controlled burns for property sake) and put up sprinklers around our cabins and houses to let big fires like this skip over. I think people have to come to terms with a patchwork forest, where there are areas of recent fire, new growth, and more established areas where fire is most likely. Right now, vast swaths of the region have tree systems that are the same age, wind damaged, and spruce filled. This equals fire. No amount of rotting will ever catch up.

So for me, its a story of 'how I stopped worrying and learned to love the fire.' Burnt areas are described routinely as devastated, destroyed, and ruined. And I understand that feeling. We become so attached to a place as we experience and their unique beauty. However go look at a forest a year, two years, five years after fire. You have a beautiful forest that is exploding with growth. The energy that has been trapped in the standing trees is freed up and the speed at which new trees come back is several times their normal rate. Trees like jackpine need fire to reproduce, and birch trees actually encourage the fire with their paper bark so their offspring (well, clone) will grow up out of their root system with no competition for light. So don't think the end of the trail is "ruined" now that fire has passed over it. Think of it as part of the place, and an opportunity to see a way the forest up there is meant to be.

Oh, and to get a sprinkler system. As silly as it is to have lawn sprinklers perched around the woods they still have a 100% success rate in this fire. Amazing.

Fire on the Gunflint

This information is up to date as of about 12:30 am tuesday morning.

It looks like the north end of the gunflint trail (after round lake, about 10 min drive from Gunflint lodge) as we speak is all burt by this high speed fire. I grabbed the map to the left before the InciWeb.org sever melted again this morning (they are having serious server issues). At least it went the unusual direction of north west that is less populated instead of north east where it would have hit Gunflint lodge and the much more populated areas surrounding it.

I did read this interesting bit at the star trib,

"While 40 buildings were lost, officials said more than 50 in the fire's path were spared, apparently because they were protected by outdoor sprinkler systems owners installed after by the 1999 "blow-down" killed millions of trees in the area and increased fire danger for years to come."

Good news for the cabin, where even in this apparently intense fire there was a 100% survival rate of buildings protected by sprinklers and a 100% burn rate for those without. That is very impressive.

I feel sorry for the people up a the end of the trail, they have had bad luck. First the blow down in 1999 then threaten by serious fire for the past 2-3 years then this out of season human made freak fire comes in an finishes the disaster the blow down started almost 8 years ago. But if you map the fire activity in that area where the blow down was worst, the coverage of what has been burnt by fire is nearing total. I remember my BWCA book (now in a box some place) that said it was not a question of if but when fire would come after a wind event. He said that normally, 10 years after a blowdown fire should have consumed most of it, allowing new growth to rise up. So far, his predictions are accurate.

That trip megan I took 2 years ago is cursed, I think by the time this is over the entire route will have burned!! Still no threat to our property, and I can't imagine that this fire would become one. I am going to post more about fire later, I have lots to write on the subject.

Lobster lobster

Today we got our first package! Our first piece of any mail really. It was a card from our friends Sara and Will out east whom we have gotten to know through their search for a Vet school for Sara to attend, and she chose the U of M! The also have a corgi named Maggie who they also got later on in her life named and she wanted Winnie to know what life was like out east so she sent a lobster! Here is a move I took of Winnie playing with it for the first time. She loves the squeaker.

apartment fun

Moppy moppy....

Whatcha doin?

Ooo, outside!

Post-rearranging snuggles

One of us should blog

Ah yes, one of us should blog! We have been having so much fun moving in that I have hardly sat down at the computer in days. What a good change! Now my RSS blog feed (Really Simple Syndication, updates you on new stories) is in the 100s instead of in the 1's because I checked it so often.

This morning Megan and I had Dave and Zach over for brunch, Zach who is visiting from TX. It was great and I managed not to burn the frittata. Note to self, use blue cheese from now on yum! It was so civilized and normal, I loved it. Dave is cooking dinner tonight, that should be amazing too.

The apartment is coming together really well. Megan and I hit IKEA just to walk around and walked out with a huge load of stuff. Mostly small stuff, like a spatula and some hangers, but we started to buy chairs to replace the ugly ones I brought up from Northfield. The chair in question is to the left here, and it looks much better than its big bulky brethren next to it. Comfortable too.

Winnie is settling in better now, thats good to see. Some things can still set her off to a buffing nervous state, but the AC/vent fan coming on is not bothering her any more. And the general background noise of University is fading for both winnie and me too.

I am not sure how this blog will work now that Megan and I are living together. It was created in large part for us to keep in touch with each other while we spent our year apart. It did a great job at that and has grown far beyond what we originally intended. Its a place to share ideas and keep in touch, so that will all stay the same. But perhaps some of that will be able to be replaced with actual human communication, and I don't think that would be a bad thing!

Good morning University Ave