Wildfires
In all, about 60 wildfires are burning around the nation, from Alaska to Utah to Florida, and satellite images show hazy curtains of smoke hanging over huge portions of the eastern two-thirds of the country.
Smoke travels well, said Georg Grell, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo.
The hotter the fire, the higher its smoke can go - and the higher the smoke goes into the atmosphere, the farther it typically travels, Grell told OurAmazingPlanet.
"The winds are much stronger up there, so it gets transported much quicker," he said. In addition, once smoke gets to certain altitudes, it's less likely to be washed out of the air by rainstorms, Grell said.
Smoke from extremely hot wildfires can rise 4 to 5 miles (7 to 8 kilometers) into the atmosphere, and can even trigger massive thunderstorms, but it's likely that the smoke from the recent spate of fires is hanging out about 1 mile (1.5 km) above the ground.

'Damn you al-qaeda!' An American flag waves in front of a house leveled by the Waldo Canyon fire in the Mountain Shadows community in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2 July 2012
NewsChannel5 Chief Meteorologist Mark Johnson decided to take a look at the the Doppler radar images from Beebe, Arkansas from the night when many red-winged blackbirds had fallen dead to the ground, and he discovered something interesting.
"There it was. This huge plume of turbulence over the Beebe birds just as they began their frenzied flight," Johnson said.Having homed in on the probable cause, Johnson then introduced some nonsense:
The turbulence appears above the birds between about 7,000 and 12,000 feet. Johnson realized there are only a few possible explanations for this phenomena.
"Birds don't fly that high, and he quickly ruled out military action, a sonic boom, meteor shower or alien invasion."While we can understand why Johnson ruled out military action or a sonic boom (there were no flights over the area at the time), Johnson never explained why he ruled out a "meteor shower", although we can understand the inclusion of "alien invasion" - to ridicule by association the idea of a "meteor shower" or other meteorite-related phenomenon.
Johnson then went on to say:
"Something in the atmosphere, something mysterious, occurred over Beebe, Arkansas that night... And I believe it was part of what caused those birds to fly and then die."Indeed, but with the answer staring him in the face, Johnson lost the plot completely:
Johnson's research captured an unseen temperature reversal just above the birds' roosting area at about 1,500 feet above the ground. This temperature "inversion" acted like a megaphone, amplifying all the noises that occurred in Beebe at that time. As the fireworks exploded, the sound was amplified by the inversion and became much louder than normal. This appears to have startled the birds so much that they burst into flight, running into each other, and nearby buildings. Thousands of the now-disoriented birds then crashed to the ground, dying from blunt force trauma.

The Doppler radar image used by Johnson to explain the bird deaths. We have added the blue-green arrow to illustrate the trajectory of a meteor reaching that altitude before exploding in the lower atmosphere.
This electrical effect can also explain the massive fish die-offs around the same time. Consider this report, just in today, about two children being mysteriously electrocuted to death as they swam in a lake in Missouri on 4th July. The thousands of dead fish found upstream from Beebe on New Year's Eve 2010 could well have had their circuits fried because of significant electrical discharge that accompanied the overhead MoCF airburst. Now check out this Tunguska blast simulation by Sandia lab. An incoming bolide exploding overhead would knock the wind out of anything within a radius relative to the extent of its blast. It would probably knock airplanes out of the sky too - more on that below.
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A sudden wind shift draws smoke back over the top of Sheep Mountain Tuesday as the Squirrel Creek fire spreads.
The Albany County Sheriff's Office issued an immediate evacuation notice this morning for areas east of Sheep Mountain to Harmony Lane, and south of Lake Hattie as crews battle the Squirrel Creek Fire near Woods Landing southwest of Laramie. The notice includes the area northwest of Lake Hattie to Highway 130.
The evacuation center is the Albany County Fairgrounds. For more information, call 307-721-1801.
Authorities urged evacuees to assist neighbors if necessary.
The Albany County media release also advised that the Arapaho Fire in the county's northeast area is advancing quickly. Authorities said residents should be prepared to leave the area immediately. "This fire is moving at unprecedented rates," the release said.
The Arapaho Fire, currently the state's largest, is burning near Laramie Peak southwest of Wheatland. It had burned nearly 88,000 acres by this morning, fire spokesman Jim Whittington said.

Before (above) and after (below): The devastating Colorado wildfire can be seen in two overhead images in the Colorado Springs neighbourhood of Mountain Shadows
- 32,000 evacuated from Colorado Springs including Air Force Academy cadets as inferno spread
- About 300 homes reportedly destroyed in Waldo Canyon Fire, which has been named the No. 1 priority for emergency crews
- Obama to tour the disaster-stricken area on Friday to meet firefighters working around the clock
The photos revealed the Mountain Shadows area of Colorado Springs, where dozens of homes can be seen decimated by the fast-moving fire.
The raging wildfire that has encroached on the state's second-largest city and threatened the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Mayor Steve Bach said a more accurate account will be available later in the day of the damage from a blaze that has burned out of control for much of the week and forced more than 30,000 evacuees to frantically pack up belongings and flee.
As it surpassed 110,000 acres on Wednesday, three towns were evacuated and the people taken to Lame Deer 21 miles away, according to KULR TV in Billings. But Lame Deer is without power, so 700 people were crowding into the shelter there looking for food and other assistance.
"We've had quite a few families that are actually displaced," Geri Small, of the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Cheyenne, to the television station. "Their homes burned, and they don't have nothing. Some don't even have their shoes on."

This aerial photo taken on Wednesday, June 27, 2012, shows burned homes in the Mountain Shadows residential area of Colorado Springs, Colo., that were destroyed by the Waldo Canyon wildfire. More than 30,000 people have been displaced by the fire.
Tens of thousands of Colorado residents forced from their homes by an out-of-control wildfire took refuge with friends or family and crammed into hotels and shelters as Army troops helped firefighters protect the U.S. Air Force Academy from the flames.
The blaze was raging early Thursday in the mountains and in Colorado's second-largest city, after more than 30,000 evacuees quickly packed up belongings and fled. The wildfire was one of many burning across the parched West that have destroyed structures and prompted evacuations in Montana and Utah.
The full scope of the fire remained unknown. So intense were the flames and so thick the smoke that rescue workers weren't able to tell residents which structures were destroyed and which ones were still standing. Steve Cox, a spokesman for Mayor Steve Bach, said at least dozens of homes had been consumed.

Smoke from the Waldo Canyon Fire engulfs Interstate 25 north of Colorado Springs, Colorado, as the blaze burns out of control Tuesday, June 26. The 6,200-acre Waldo Canyon Fire has caused 32,000 residents to be evacuated. At least six other fires are active in Colorado.
"This is a firestorm of epic proportions," Richard Brown, the Colorado Springs Fire chief, said late Tuesday. Winds gusting to 65 mph through mountain canyons blew the wildfire through containment lines into northwest Colorado Springs on Tuesday afternoon.
Gov. John Hickenlooper surveyed the Waldo Canyon Fire, telling reporters it was a difficult sight to see.
"There were people's homes burned to the ground. It was surreal," he said late Tuesday night. "There's no question, it's serious. It's as serious as it gets."
The 6,200-acre fire remained only 5% contained. Officials labeled it as exhibiting "extreme fire behavior."
Evacuee: Wildfire 20 feet from home Evacuees watch and hope homes remain 'Smoke plume was coming toward us'
Colorado's so-called Waldo Canyon fire sent a mushroom cloud of smoke nearly 20,000 feet into the air over Colorado Springs near Pikes Peak, whose breathtaking vistas from the summit helped inspire the song "America the Beautiful".
Closer to the blaze, which has been fanned by winds blowing into the Southern Rockies from the prairies to the east, trees were visibly twisting from the heat of the flames.
The latest evacuations brought the total number of people forced from their homes to about 12,000 as the blaze posed a renewed threat to hundreds of dwellings and appeared to have roared to within about a mile of the U.S. Air Force Academy grounds in Colorado Springs.
Aided by a massive C-130 air tanker, Boulder County firefighters are battling a 200-to-300-acre wildfire west of Boulder this afternoon, a fast-growing and "extreme" blaze that has forced the evacuation of 26 households in the foothills and put parts of south Boulder on pre-evacuation notice.
Approximately 931 south Boulder phone numbers have been called with pre-evaucation warnings.
"We're about one ridge over from the city of Boulder," Boulder County sheriff's spokesman Rick Brough said of the fire at an afternoon press briefing.
The fire started near the 1500 block of Bison Drive in the Walker Ranch area around 1:15 p.m. and is believed to have been sparked by lightning, Brough said.
The blaze is now burning toward the northeast, Brough said.