Lakeview, Oregon: Fires – The Paths of Discovery

September 8-9, 2021

The drive from Eugene to Lakeview was very smoky. We could see smoke rising as we settled in to our campground and learned that the Cougar Peak fire had started from an unknown cause September 7, the day before our arrival. Some roads into the area were closed and the fairgrounds were turned into a basecamp for firefighters.

We don’t know if we could reproduce this double sun effect but we thought it was interesting.

Three fires are illustrated on this map. The Bootleg Fire is in the upper left corner. It burned over 400,000 acres between July 7 and August 15. The Patton Meadow Fire in the bottom center of the map burned almost 10,000 acres between August 12 and September 3 and required the evacuation of the RV park where we stayed (approximate location circled). The Cougar Peak fire is shown in red. As of September 23, the fire was only about 50% contained and had burned over 90,000 acres.

Dave took this photo our first night in the park.

Smoke hangs over part of the valley.

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds form over heat sources like wildfires.

Basecamp for firefighters

Categories: Travel

1 Comment

Laura · October 11, 2021 at 2:04 pm

Love the sun and the cloud formations.

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