See ya later, smoke!

Here's a picture taken from space Saturday afternoon (courtesy of NASA). You can clearly see the strong impact of the easterly winds on the Dollar Lake Fire smoke plume. It sent smoke rushing into the Willamette Valley, heck as far west as the Oregon coast!

Here's the picture taken Sunday afternoon. I know it's tiny-The Dollar Lake Fire is the northern most smoke plume in the picture (we have several fires burning in central Oregon right now). The winds really relaxed today. You can tell they switched direction and blew the smoke to the northeast.

I talked with folks at the fire command center-they said the winds were so light this morning they had to cancel flights for the helicopters and planes dropping retardant and water on the flames. Mother nature sure has a mind of her own. Yesterday the fire exploded with sustained easterly winds of 20-30 mph. Today-not pretty still air! Just one more obstacle for the hundreds of firefighters trying to get a handle on this fire. For more information on the fire: http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2563/