Lucky me spent an awesome week with friends in Wenatchee (daughter and son-in-law of the guy that tainted my mead) helping clean up from pops, some weed pulling, and helping them label their 4,000 garlic plants (nothing over 10 pounds for me though). Plus watching a crew of guys take down a 70 some year old Siberian Elm that was VERY diseased and right about 80 feet tall (24.3 meters for the rest of the world) with 4 trunks, EPIC takedown!!!
Lucky for us the flames are still a few miles outside town, but the smoke was incredible. People are comparing the fires this year with the 1994 fires. Not that bad yet, but bad enough for the President to visit and offer federal dollars to help out. Highway 2 is still closed, only way into Lake Chelan is from the North and only 1 road at that, 97 and 97A intermittently closed, I-90 closed for a short while, Blewett is seeing a LOT of traffic, Pateros and Ardenvoir sustained about 200 burned homes and are literally a disaster, and the litany goes on and on... Totally Frelled....
And the damage is what it is, it'll return, but it's not the prettiest thing to look at. Plus the rain and snow will just make for soil erosion and floods depending on how deeply the heat penetrated the ground. Yes it's bad now, but it could make more problems 5 and even 10 years down the road...
Thanks for the concern!
