What “not seeing the retardant until it’s too late” looks like.

It appears that I may have dodged a bullet.  I am hesitant to write this for the obvious reasons — “so what happens if.  .  .”  Never piss into the wind, and never tug on Superman’s cape.  More on that in a few moments.

Now, the bulk of the threat is diminished and CalFire estimates the Lowell Fire is roughly 75% contained.  As per their site:

July 31, 2015 at 7:33 AM

Acreage remains unchanged but containment up to 75%.

July 31, 2015 at 7:00 AM Morning briefing is starting.

WEATHER: Partly cloudy. Afternoon cumulus build ups east of the fire with t-storms closer to the Sierra Crest. About a 5% chance that a cell could move over the Lowell Fire. Will need to monitor for outflow boundaries or any stray storms that may try and approach the incident.

Of interest: Observed weather on Thursday was high of 101 with relative humidity at 13% at the Secret Town mobile fire weather station.

Most divisions are starting the suppression repair phase of the fire.

Of concern are the creeping thunderstorms (without much rain at all), embered fires, increased winds and unseen/unaddressed hot spots.  The open flames are predominantly suppressed.

With that, my unabashed thanks go to the young men and women of CalFire who walked the fiery front lines working spades, shovels, chainsaws and primitive hand tools.  Then came those running the bulldozers, tanker trucks, grass rigs and numerous forms of fire apparatus.

Next were the brave aviators flying helos, twin-engine and four-engine fixed wing aircraft, whose pilots braved winds created by the open roaring flames of the naked, dry forest — an event known to create its own singular weather patterns of deadly and unpredictable turbulence.

Kudos to the big boys of the DC-10, whose pilots take a mostly unmodified commercial airframe and make it do what no sane civilian captains would otherwise command: fly the nap-of-the-earth only a few hundred feet above hills and mountains, flaps down and nose-up, through canyons and barely above the searching flames of wildfires, in order to effectively and accurately drop retardant upon the necessary prescribed areas so tactically designated.

The story of the DC-10 air tankers.

Above, the Air National Guard — flying C-130s — drops retardant; cockpit view.

Aerial firefighting is not without its dangers; from 2002.

I submit that most all of those people above clank when they walk, the women included.

And finally, combing the news, I found one rather distressing note, involving Superman.  DC comics has decided that Superman punching cops is now de rigueur.

From FoxNews.com:

Superman fights the police in new comic paralleling Ferguson riots

by Brian Henry

The latest issue of Action Comics finds Superman battling a foe on the streets of Metropolis, but this time he isn’t taking on his rival Lex Luther. Instead, he’s battling the police, which has some people outraged.

“There’s some fans that are alienated, a portion of the older fans,” said Dimitrios Fragiskatos, the manager of Midtown Comics in New York City. “[But] younger fans seem to be embracing it.”

Of course the Millennials are eating it up.  The entire United States is corrupt.  Just ask them.

Ladies and gentlemen, don’t we have anything else to do besides trash the nation in which we reside?

BZ