Idaho wildfire rages into 12th day near Sun Valley ski resort

Laura Zuckerman in Reuters: A wildfire that has forced the evacuation of more than 2,000 homes in central Idaho roared largely unchecked into a 12th day on Monday near the ski resort of Sun Valley, even though fire crews launched a big offensive against the blaze at the weekend.

Firefighters took advantage of calmer winds and higher humidity levels on Sunday to attack the flames aggressively, but still ended the day with containment lines carved around less than 10 percent of the blaze's perimeter, fire officials said.

The lightning-sparked fire has been raging since August 7 near Sun Valley and the adjacent tourist towns of Ketchum and Hailey. It has charred some 101,000 acres of parched sagebrush, grasslands and pine forests in the Sawtooth National Forest.

On Sunday afternoon, local authorities had expected to lift a mandatory evacuation for 200 homes in two neighborhoods north of Hailey. They said those plans were on hold Sunday night as gusty winds threatened to breathe new life into the blaze.

The ever-shifting nature of the so-called Beaver Creek fire, has frustrated fire managers. The blaze has exhibited erratic, even extreme behavior, engulfing whole trees and making unpredictable runs down mountainsides.

...More than 1,100 firefighters have been assigned to the blaze, backed up by bulldozers, water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers carrying fire-retardant chemicals...

The aftermath of the 1910 St. Joe fire in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, from the Library of Congress

Two Idaho fires rage as summer heat wears on

Tamara Kemsley in Nature World News: Forest fires are once again blazing in the hot, dry West. Only this time, instead of Colorado or Arizona, it's Idaho that's feeling the heat after two fires started over the weekend continue to burn.

One, called the Lodgepole fire, is located roughly 15 miles west of the town Challisa and was discovered around noon on Saturday, at which point local fire resources responded both quickly and effectively, according to NASA. As of Monday, the cause of the fire remained unknown and firefighters continued to work suppressing the flames that had burned some 650 acres.

No injuries have been linked to the fire, though a local campground was forced to shut down because of it.

Making matters difficult for the firefighters was the discovery of a second fire, called the Bradley fire, nearby and just a handful of hours after the Lodgepole fire was first uncovered, forcing firefighters to reallocate resources.

"We had an aggressive initial attack," Paul Sever of the Central Idaho Fire Center told the Associated Press about the Lodgepole fire. "But we moved stuff from there when the Bradley fire broke out."

For this reason, a DC-10 jet fire retardant bomber is currently on loan from Southern California and has made, according to Sever, several successfully drops....

Generic wildfire photo from the US Bureau of Land Management

Dust storm accelerates snowmelt in Idaho mountains

KTVU.com: A wind storm earlier this month covered a southwestern Idaho mountain range with dust from Oregon and Nevada and accelerated snowmelt due to the darker surface absorbing heat from the sun as opposed to being reflected by pristine white snow, scientists say.

The Idaho Statesman reports that experts said the March 6 storm with winds averaging 34 mph and gusts up to 57 mph put a dust layer on the northern Owyhee Mountains. Hydrologists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture said observations in the region found accelerated melting from March 10 to March 16, with the Owyhee River runoff peaking a week earlier than normal.

"Nobody on our staff has ever witnessed anything similar," said research hydrologist Adam Winstral. Snow surveyors with the Natural Resources Conservation Service said the dust reached as far east as the upper Mores Creek watershed near Idaho City in south-central Idaho.

"Because it's been so dry in the valleys in Oregon and Nevada, the wind picked the dust up and carried it here," said Ron Abramovich, a water supply specialist with the Idaho Natural Resources Conservation Service. Abramovich said workers removed 3-inch core samples of snow that, when melted, left a half-inch plug of dust. "That's just one spot," Abramovich said. "When you spread this much dust over the watershed, you know there are impacts."....

Galena summit near Sun Valley, Idaho, shot by Stephen Marks, public domain

Idaho resort town ordered to evacuate over wildfire

Laura Zuckerman in Reuters: Authorities on Saturday ordered the evacuation of a small mountain resort in Idaho as firefighters braced for the possibility that a wildfire that has charred 82,000 acres could reach the town of Featherville in the evening.

Smoke from the Trinity Ridge Fire in the Boise National Forest blanketed roadways leading to Featherville, raising health concerns and reducing visibility, said Gary Walker, spokesman for the Elmore County Sheriff's Office.

Featherville has fewer than 100 full-time residents but vacation homes and rental cabins swell the summertime population to as many as 1,000. It was unclear how many people had remained in Featherville in recent days after warnings of a possible evacuation were issued.

The fire is one of dozens burning out of control across 10 drought-parched western states, including a blaze that destroyed dozens of homes this week in Washington state and another that threatened a town in Southern California.

The order to exit Featherville came as the fire, driven by wind gusts and low humidity, gained an additional 10,000 acres overnight, blazing just three miles west of the town....

Aftermath of 1910's "Saint Joe" fire in Idaho

A notorious US agency struggles to adapt

Rocky Barker in the Idaho Statesman: When ecologist Mike Pellant first arrived in 1981, the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey area southwest of Boise was called “the asbestos range” because it never burned.

Today, fires are frequent, and invasive cheatgrass has taken over much of the desert in the 484,000-acre area along the Snake River canyon. Climate change has warmed the area and helped the noxious weed spread into the ponderosa pines in the higher elevations of the Boise Foothills. “Ten years ago, 15 years ago, we didn’t see a problem,” said Pellant, now a coordinator of the Great Basin Restoration Initiative.

He and other land managers are struggling to gather the information they need to protect the health and productivity of the lands they manage. That effort came under fire recently from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which filed a complaint saying the Bureau of Land Management studies weren’t looking at grazing because it was politically sensitive.

The BLM’s rapid eco-regional assessments are looking at the impacts of fire, invasive species, urban sprawl and climate change in nine regions of the sagebrush West, Pellant said. He declined to talk about the complaint or the other regions but said the Northern Great Basin rapid area assessment that includes Idaho will look at grazing as a potential change agent.

But the Idaho-based team is hampered by a lack of landscape-level information about grazing impacts. For decades, the Bureau of Land Management kept its records based on the grazing allotments that are divided among ranchers.

...The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project did develop a lot of information about the importance of microbiotic crusts on the soil and upcoming threats, including those to the sage grouse. “The BLM just proceeded to ignore all of that information,” said Katie Fite of the Western Watersheds Project, one of the agency’s biggest critics of grazing. It can’t afford to do that now....

The Snake River Birds of Prey Conservation Area in Idaho, shot by Larry Ridenour of the Bureau of Land Management