It's that time of year. A hot southwest wind at 35 mph and loads of dead underbrush spells trouble here in Okie Land. We're still way under our usual rainfall amounts and everything is dry as a popcorn fart. Sometimes just a spark from flint in the RR ballast can start a blaze.
These are from up around Guthrie, north of the Oklahoma City metro area. There are fires in other places, too. I'm in Norman (south of the metro) and the south wind smells of grass smoke.
Wow
I wish we could have shared rain with you. Parts of Georgia had nearly a foot rain in April. Y'all just be careful out there.
Andy
As I delivered a survey yesterday to a client we got to talking about his son's current adventure into the cattle business. They had a fantastic fire experience recently. The 30 year-old son and my client set out to do a controlled burn on a 750 acre tract of Flint Hills rangeland about 50 miles east of Wichita. For those of you not familiar with the Flint Hills, it is an area stretching from northern Oklahoma across Kansas to southern Nebraska that is the primary tall grass country of the US. The rugged, rocky grassland is good for two things, grazing and taking pictures. One of the necessary elements of keeping the ecosystem working is regular burning of all dead matter. Imagine an endless sea of grass, more than head high, on fire.
The largest challenge with controlled burns is only burning where you want to burn. Add in that Kansas is home to a few thousand wind turbines for a very logical reason. The goal is to burn as close to your outer fences as possible without burning too much of your neighbor's property at the same time. Next week when they decide to burn theirs they don't have to worry about your ground because it is just starting to turn green again with nothing to burn. Add in rocky ravines that can only be crossed on foot or horseback, slowly. Wind direction shifts and sudden changes in velocity from a few mph to 25 mph make those involved acutely aware of their potential need to get out of the way of the fire ASAP. People get severely injured every year and sometimes people die.
The client and son were burning where nothing had been burnt in years. The landowner had spent over $70,000 have trees clipped, giant brush piles built and about 10 miles of new fence built to secure the perimeter and separate the tract into several pastures of nearly equal size. The dead grass was way above their heads in many places. When the fire line would hit a brush pile loaded with thousands of cedar, hedge and other trees it sounded like an explosion. Instead of flames from 10 to 30 feet high there would be an almost instantaneous leap to 60 to 80 feet around the brush pile for a few minutes. That happened many times over 750 acres.
The fire departments in that part of the world are all unpaid volunteers, but, they know everything there is to know about grassland fires. Shortly after midnight, a local fellow drove up and asked if they were intending to burn on the north side of a particular road. NO!!! They hadn't been able to get to that area yet, so were extremely upset to learn they had jumped onto a different landowners ground who had told them he didn't want to burn his yet. They called the local fire department then for help. It was about an hour before they got there because they had been 13 miles away putting out another fire. They reported on arrival that they had seen the fire from where they had been and had wondered if they would be called out to help. Amazingly, by the time they arrived the client and son had extinguished the errant portion of the blaze. Today, that pasture land is the prettiest green you would ever hope to see. Shortly there will be over 150 head of steers arriving to attempt to convert tall grass into steaks.
Flint Hill Beef
Four or five years ago I contracted 7 (yes, seven) ALTA surveys in Topeka, KS. Who knew there were that many silly drive-in soda shops in Topeka?
Drove for a couple of hours across that beautiful country you talk about. It is truly a "sea of grass". Coming back through those hills of an evening the sunset illuminated the bottom of a deck of clouds in the west. It was a gorgeous sunset. And I'm prejudice against other sunsets other than Oklahoma's.
Out of a five night stay I think I had a "Flint Hill Beef" rib-eye four of those nights. I don't even remember the name of the steak house, but it was great. Was the beef really from the Flint Hills? I guess I'll just have to trust the honesty of the good folks of Kansas. 😉
> Imagine an endless sea of grass, more than head high, on fire.
>
Imagine an endless sea of pine trees, more than 100' high, on fire in what is known as a "crown fire" where the fire gets into the crown of the trees and runs up to 80 mph through the stand of trees with temperatures exceeding, in seconds, 800° Fahrenheit. Welcome to hell in the summer of 2011. If Jesus is the right hand of GOD, then a crown fire is the left hand.
Now, to be fair, I've seen grass fires run about as fast as the fire truck can go in a field also. For this reason, we chase the fire from the black instead of run from the fire in the green.
I love to burn off my pastures and the underbrush. It does look pretty when it's done.
Wind, humidity, and level of moisture are the largest components and when you catch it right, it's typically on a Tuesday and not a weekend. When we burn ours off, we plow the lines for about two days till it's dust and about 20' wide. The first part of the fire is the down-wind side. The fire will burn back INTO the wind, slowly. We let this go for about an hour, then light the upwind side with a drip torch. THEN we cut the fire lines in half and quarters with the drip torch. When fire lines come together, they get VERY tall even if the flames were only a foot or so high. When this happens, they throw embers a long way. This is why we cut it up so they burn the component parts out inside the burn line.
Still, it can get out. You have to have all day to watch it.
