Your impression of my "revisionist history" is based upon unfamiliarity with the region.
You clearly don't live in Washington or you'd understand the difference. The state is effectively two states, with completely different biomes created by the Cascade mountains. The west side of the Cascades (and even more so in the Olympics) is rainforest, with natural fire intervals measured in hundreds of years. The east side starts as ponderosa with a fair amount of lodgepole pine (both fire dependent species), where typical fire return intervals are < 30 years. As you descend from the mountains on the east side, you reach a desert where sagebrush dominates.
The 1926 fires (and many others from that era) were the result of rampant railroad based logging done in that era. They would high-grade the forests and leave massive piles of logging slash, oftentimes burnt on purpose at a time when firefighting capabilities were virtually nonexistent. Though Colville is on the dry east side where fires are normal, even the west side of the mountains and the Puget Sound basin were oftentimes smoky in that era -- but that was indisputably a result of the forest practices of that era. Similar events happened in the upper Midwest, such as the famous fires that raced through Hinckley, MN after rampant logging.
Fires on the east side of the state -- both in the mountains (where Colville lies) and the sagebrush steppe, are frequent and regular. The famous Methow Valley's name means "smoky valley" in the native's language.
Fires on the west side? Not so much. What Washington is regularly seeing now is a combination of two things -- more westside fires due to increasingly regular droughts, and the emergence of a summertime flow of wind from east to west over the cascades. Those winds were a once in a blue moon event before 2016.
Stating the fact that "climate is always changing" as a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility for altering our atmosphere is ridiculous. That's like shooting someone in the head and then claiming that "death is natural - everyone dies some day!" and then denying that your own fingerprints are all over the smoking gun.
Neat area -- I also lived in B'ham and loved it. Lived aboard my sailboat there for a number of years as well, and absolutely loved spending weekends in the San Juans. The area seems to be much degraded since I left in 2008, as Californians moved north to avoid fires and increasing insanity.
I'm now in Michigan, because I wanted to teach myself to farm without fossil fuels using horse power. Still have the farm and the horses, but not the hope that my actions will inspire any difference in outcome.
BTW. Washington is not an isolated case. Pick a coastal region just about anywhere in the world -- Alaska, Chile, Norway, the UK, Namibia, Australia... and I can point to some major ecological problems in recent years which had not happened in recorded history. You could say that keeping track of these things is a hobby of mine.
OUTSTANDING POST!!
Your impression of my "revisionist history" is based upon unfamiliarity with the region.
You clearly don't live in Washington or you'd understand the difference. The state is effectively two states, with completely different biomes created by the Cascade mountains. The west side of the Cascades (and even more so in the Olympics) is rainforest, with natural fire intervals measured in hundreds of years. The east side starts as ponderosa with a fair amount of lodgepole pine (both fire dependent species), where typical fire return intervals are < 30 years. As you descend from the mountains on the east side, you reach a desert where sagebrush dominates.
The 1926 fires (and many others from that era) were the result of rampant railroad based logging done in that era. They would high-grade the forests and leave massive piles of logging slash, oftentimes burnt on purpose at a time when firefighting capabilities were virtually nonexistent. Though Colville is on the dry east side where fires are normal, even the west side of the mountains and the Puget Sound basin were oftentimes smoky in that era -- but that was indisputably a result of the forest practices of that era. Similar events happened in the upper Midwest, such as the famous fires that raced through Hinckley, MN after rampant logging.
Fires on the east side of the state -- both in the mountains (where Colville lies) and the sagebrush steppe, are frequent and regular. The famous Methow Valley's name means "smoky valley" in the native's language.
Fires on the west side? Not so much. What Washington is regularly seeing now is a combination of two things -- more westside fires due to increasingly regular droughts, and the emergence of a summertime flow of wind from east to west over the cascades. Those winds were a once in a blue moon event before 2016.
Stating the fact that "climate is always changing" as a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility for altering our atmosphere is ridiculous. That's like shooting someone in the head and then claiming that "death is natural - everyone dies some day!" and then denying that your own fingerprints are all over the smoking gun.
Neat area -- I also lived in B'ham and loved it. Lived aboard my sailboat there for a number of years as well, and absolutely loved spending weekends in the San Juans. The area seems to be much degraded since I left in 2008, as Californians moved north to avoid fires and increasing insanity.
I'm now in Michigan, because I wanted to teach myself to farm without fossil fuels using horse power. Still have the farm and the horses, but not the hope that my actions will inspire any difference in outcome.
BTW. Washington is not an isolated case. Pick a coastal region just about anywhere in the world -- Alaska, Chile, Norway, the UK, Namibia, Australia... and I can point to some major ecological problems in recent years which had not happened in recorded history. You could say that keeping track of these things is a hobby of mine.