Friday 5 July 2013

Geting the Hell out of There: When the Wild Fire Roars

There have been power outages twice in two days because emergency systms have been tripped on the high tension electric power transmission lines coming south from James Bay.

 The culprit is wild fire. Several have been burning out of control for days: this picture was taken from a NASA satillite on Wednesday showing the extent of the smoke. Heat and fine particles from the smoke are tripping the shut down mechanism on the lines.

The fire apparently were started by lightning, something that has gone frequently ever since the trees grew back after the last Ice Age.  What is new is the extreme heat in the region, and the perturbations in weather patterns.

Gonna have to get used to dealing with this kind of disruption, it seems.  The guys who took this video would certainly agree.

 

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