Pyrocumulus Clouds

Our much-anticipated camping expedition to Corral Pass near the Norse Peak Wilderness Area (northeast of Mt. Rainier) this weekend was cut short by a 70-acre wildfire about 4 miles north of our campsite. I took this photo minutes after our campground was evacuated (4 of us broke camp in 20 minutes) and we were driving out on Forest Service "road" 7174.

The photo above shows the smoke. Those below show pyrocumulus clouds--a type that forms when warm air from the forest fire rises, expands and cools. The water vapor in the air condenses on the many tiny particles of smoke and soot (condensation nuclei) and creates a cloud or clouds directly above the smoke.

Otherwise, a good time was had by all.

Pyrocumlus clouds forming in the hot, smokey air rising and condensing above the wildfire.  Photo b MM Ruth

Pyrocumulus clouds--you can see the olumn of gray wildfire smoke in the center of the clouds.  Photo by MM Ruth

This is the sign posted at the trailhead to Greenwater and Echo Lake...and greeted us on our return hike from the lake!  The trail was closed, then the campground (Corral Pass) where we were camping was evacuated, then five-mile road to Corral Pass was closed on Monday afternoon.      (Photo by MM Ruth)

Cross-QuarteR Fog

Standing in the middle of an early August day, I know fog season is just around the corner. My yard is at its warmest, ripest, driest, and deciduously greenest. Plants are not growing or blooming, nor are they fading or drooping. They are just there in the dirt waiting. Songbirds are few, the dawn chorus is silent, nestlings have fledged. There is an eerie stillness in which a few languid bees buzz. Something in that stillness tells me the earth is exhausted and can no longer hold onto summer. The fogs are rolling in from the Pacific over the Black Hills. Our warm landscape, clear skies, and cool nights create the possibility of patchy fog in our fields and valleys and over our lakes.

   This is the feeling of one of the cross-quarter point—the halfway point between the summer solstice (June 21) and the autumn equinox (September 22). When I mention this to friends, they say they have noticed something, too—something in the air or in the quality of light—but they didn’t know it was called the cross-quarter or had a name at all.

  Most of us don't celebrate these cross-quarter points, but ancient cultures did as these were important times to plant, to harvest, to move, to stay, to respond to the living planet. Each quarter point has a Gaelic-Celtic name:  This year, February 2 is Imbolc, May 5 is Beltane, August 7 is Lughnasa, and November 11 is Samain.

You may have heard of these names if you are familiar with things Celtic, pagan, or the novels of Mary Renault. I had heard of Lughnasa (spelled in various ways, but all pronounced Loon-na-sah) only because of the 1998 movie Dancing at the Lughnasa, starring Meryl Streep and Michael Gambon. The movie, based on a 1990 play, is set in 1936 in County Donegal, Ireland, during a summer of personal "turning points" for five sisters.

 Lughnasa marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. (Though our calendars mark September 21 or 22 as the first day of autumn, that day of equal day and night really marks the peak of autumn and the beginning of winter. (In the same odd way, when we celebrate our birthday we say we are turning 39 or we are 39. In fact, we have completed our 39th year and are beginning our 40th).

  Every morning now is a noticeably darker, every night a little cooler, and there is nothing the earth can do about it. Resigned, the earth simply lets go and releases its summer into the autumn air. But not all at once. Slowly, and in a long series of sighs and exhalations.

On still, cool nights you can hear the tired earth sighing. In the morning, you can see the fog it has exhaled. 

Welcome Autumn!

51 Names for Fog

“Fog” is a clunky name for a cloud, especially one that appears so delicate and ethereal.  It’s a simplistic name, too, one that doesn’t do justice to the myriad and nuanced forms fog assumes across the globe. Meteorologists have added some polysyllabic complexity by describing several basic fog types: radiation fog, advection fog, freezing fog, ice fog, and upslope fog. Few people (including weather reporters) use these names. We rely instead on generic adjectives—“thick,” “dense,” “heavy,” “patchy,” or “light”—to describe most fogs we encounter.

Can’t we do better?  Why, the Eskimos have fifty words for snow!

In fact, we have done better. A recent moderate-effort search in my guidebooks to the weather, textbooks on atmospheric science, and cloud-related websites, yielded these names: air hoar, acid fog, advection fog, antarctic sea smoke, arctic sea smoke, arctic mist, black fog, cacimbo, California fog, caribou fog, dry fog, evaporation fog, flash fog, fog streamer, fog bank, fog bow, fog belt, fog drip, fog horizon, force 10 fog, frontal fog, frost smoke, frozen fog, freezing fog, frost smoke, ground fog, high fog, hill fog, ice fog, killer fog, London Fog, mixing fog, mist, monsoon fog, pea souper, pogonip, precipitation fog, radiation fog, frost flakes, rime fog, sea fog, sea mist, sea smoke, smog, steam devil, steam fog, supercooled fog, tule fog, upslope fog, and valley fog, and water smoke.

Unless you live in the U.K., you might not know about the "pea souper," the local name for the famous and infamous thick fog that occurs there. Thick fogs have always occurred naturally in London, but they became increasingly toxic during the Industrial Revolution when factories and fireplaces belched black smoke and soot from burning cheap sulfur-laden coal. Once-benign fogs formed around the particles of smoke and soot and became dangerous to breathe.  

In December 1952, one especially thick pea souper hung over London for five days and caused widespread coughing, choking, bronchitis, lung inflammation, and the deaths of 12,000 people from respiratory failure. An estimated 4000 people died during the five days and another 8000 in the months afterward.

This nightmarish cloud event and public-health crisis lead to the passage of the 1956 Clean Air Act in the United Kingdom. Though coal burning has decreased, pea soupers still occur in London, though they contain the “smoke” of automobile exhaust and industrial air pollutants instead of burning coal. In London as elsewhere, this menacing cloud is known as smog—a name derived from combining smoke and fog. 

Click here to read more about the Great Fog of 1952.

The Wilderness Act and the Marbled Murrelet

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act, which set aside public land for special protection. Thanks to this act, we now have 758 official wilderness acres covering nearly 110 million acres across the United States.

Looking back, it seems incredible that it was not until 1964 that we had a legal definition of wilderness or rules to protect it. "Wilderness" is different from national park, national forest, and wildlife refuge. The Wilderness Act defines it this way:

"In contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape...wilderness is an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

David Brower, founder of the Sierra Club, produced a tongue-in-cheek definition that is easier to remember: "Wilderness is where the hand of man has not set foot."

Last weekend, I had the privilege of spending time in the Siuslaw National Forest on the central Oregon coast. This national forest includes three wilderness areas--Rock Creek, Drift Creek, and Cummins Creek--total 23,000 acres of nearly pristine old-growth temperate rain forests. These wilderness areas, as well as much of the Siuslaw, are prime nesting habitat for the marbled murrelet. These seabirds nest on wide, mossy branches in the mature and old-growth Sitka Spruce, Douglas-fir, and other native conifers growing in these areas.

To keep the wilderness areas untrammeled, visitors are allowed to hike, back-country camp--though Rock Creek Wilderness Area has no developed trails or trailheads. Given the remoteness of Rock Creek and the fact that I was hiking solo last weekend, I opted for a more trammeled experience in state park.

The "Unwelcome Mat"--very glad to know this area will not be trammeled for a while.       Photo by MM Ruth

The upland and marsh trails through the Beaver Creek section of Brian Booth State Park were pleasant, but had been lovingly "trammeled" over the years--mostly by beaver, but more recently by humans. Still, I was delighted to see the sign (above) at the end of a boardwalk over the creek. Though this park is not managed as official wilderness, it is reassuring to know that it will regain some of its wildness in years to come. 

The challenging of protecting and managing our wild places has never been greater. The observance of the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act has allowed for much reflection (at least in the conservation community) of the value of wild lands and what it means to leave them untrammeled. One thought-provoking article, "The Wilderness Act is Facing a Midlife Crisis," appeared in the New York Times and asks readers to ponder how to manage wilderness in the face of climate change and its impacts--something no one anticipated in 1964.  "Why not intervene--carefully, selectively, with humility--in the places that need help the most, with an eye toward giving nature, and us, more option?" asks author Christopher Solomon.

Should some "trammeling" be allowed if it means moving Joshua trees to higher elevations within Joshua Tree Wilderness Areas so we don't lose them (as models predict) by century's end? Should trammeling include removing invasive species in wilderness areas? Should it include clearing old-growth forests of fallen timber to reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fires?

I am not sure anyone (and most especially me) has any answers--at least at the 110-million-acre scale. Perhaps not even at the 110-acre scale. Still, it is important to ask the questions and have a conversation. And even more important to find your way to your nearest Wilderness Area. You can do that at the bottom of here.