Teri J Pieper

Author Archives: Teri J Pieper

A Real Life Air Show

August 24, 2015 – 7:19 am
Posted in wildfire
Tagged DC10, fire retardant, Twisp River fire
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If you follow the news, you have probably seen my little town’s name featured the last few days. A human-caused fire started just a few miles from Twisp and rapidly burned some houses and took the lives of three fire fighters. It’s been an enormous tragedy.

We evacuated for two days while the fire behavior and wind were erratic and there was a possibility it could come over the ridge to our house. Luckily for us, it did not. The fire line is about a mile and a half away, as the raven flies. We returned, even though the whole valley was on level 3 evacuation notice, to see what was going on and to make our place safer. We keep our bags packed in case we need to flee again. Friday evening we went to Patterson Lake and watched the aerial fight to slow down the fire’s approach to a forested neighborhood. The pilots flying these planes are tremendously courageous to do what they do. Who ever imagined that DC10’s would be used for fire suppression? In addition to the big jets there are at least four small planes that can fly across a lake’s surface and suck water into pontoons to be dropped on the burning fire. There have been a wide variety of helicopters and other planes in use also.

The last couple of days there has been some cooler weather, holding the smoke close to the ground smothering most of Washington and grounding the aircraft. This does help the fire fighters on the ground because it also slows down the progress of the fire. When it warms up again and they can see the landscape, hopefully they will see a fire that can be contained.

And this is just one of the smaller fires that are consuming the landscape of our region. The Okanogan fires are much larger and threatening more homes.

The front of the fire

One of the water scooping planes

Helicopter with a bucket for water drops

Most of the time, the planes go to Moses Lake for refueling and more retardant but on the radio we heard that one of them was going to John Day Oregon.

Even when the red fire retardant is dry, it will slow down or stop a fire’s advance.

Here is an article about the aircraft used in fire suppression.

Northern Lights During a Dark Night

August 16, 2015 – 8:15 am
Posted in northern lights
Tagged Aurora borealis, dark skies, Methow Valley, northern lights
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Last night’s power outage made for a darker than usual night. No moon and no hazy skies also provided good looks at stars and meteors and even the northern lights! We are lucky to have less light pollution than a lot of places.

The dogs thought I was nuts standing out there in the dark and they went inside to bed. I was only up til midnight when it seemed like the aurora faded away. This morning I learned that they were even more dramatic in the wee hours of the morning. A girl’s got to sleep sometime!

This is looking down valley towards fires burning in Black Canyon and along the Columbia River

Looking up

Cedar Creek Falls

I should have been working today but my boss (me) gave me the day off for fun and exercise. Too much time in front of the computer is not good for any of us. You do know that, don’t you?

MA suggested the Cedar Creek Falls trail near Mazama. I’ve only hiked it once before and remembered it as being dusty and at the falls I never got a good view. I think it must have been earlier in the summer with higher water because today we easily got to the top of the falls and the cascades and with some effort, we were able to get to the bottom of one of the tall waterfalls. It looked like there was another below us but it was steep and we didn’t want to let the dogs get close to it. It was worth the dust and horse poop on the trail. The cool mist off the falls felt really refreshing! I wish I could bottle that feeling to use for the rest of the summer.

For these photos I was using a gorillapod tripod and Lumix super zoom camera. Not the best gear for moving water but it worked.

Part of the upper cascades

Looking down over the edge of the tall waterfall

These yellow flowers were growing out of the cliff to the right of the falls.

All of us in one photo!

Hummingbirds at Sunset

The long hours of dusk in the summer time are some of my favorites. And recently we’ve had tremendous sunsets most every evening. This is partially due to smoke from neighboring wildfires. It doesn’t slow down the hummingbirds. We still see them going to the feeders, sometimes aggressively defending them from other hummers. There are fewer than there were a month ago. They are mostly juveniles now. The adults have moved on, migrating south to their wintering grounds or up in the mountains in search of nectar from wildflowers. I do enjoy warm summer evenings on our deck.

The clouds provide an ever-changing view.

Recording the Changes

After the Rising Eagle fire I established a couple of photo points. Originally I had three but I narrowed it down to just two. I made one post right after the fire and you can see it here. It’s been a year now and there have been changes. The pines and native shrubs have been replaced with many weeds and non-native grasses. Just about all of the pines died. Some of the shrubs have sprouted from their roots. These include serviceberry, currant, chokecherry and wild rose. There are bitterbrush seedlings. Snowberry is abundant. Apparently it reacts positively to fire. Last fall we had trees and shrubs planted with cages and irrigation. They have had nearly 100% survival! Native grass seed was also planted and its success has been somewhat spotty however where it’s coming in, it looks good. Some of the native bunch grasses survived the fire and re-sprouted. Also the tiny wildflowers that were dormant at the time of the fire survived and did well this spring. Larger wildflowers like lupine and balsamroot had a harder time but I think in the future they will come back strong.

Photo point 1. The boulders you see in many of these photos were completely covered with shrubs before the fire. We didn’t know they were there.