Posted by David Sherman on Friday, February 18, 2005 at 12:45PM :
In Reply to: Been a bad year for Snow & Rain here! posted by Willy-N on Friday, February 18, 2005 at 11:46AM :
We already had spring runoff here, 4 times the average streamflows, ice breakup, etc. It's cool now, but no snow to speak of. Fortunately the ground was saturated going into the winter this time. A rainy summer could keep the woods wet like last year, but low snowpack will really hurt irrigators and hydroelectric.
I remember 76-77 well. Was one of the last years of our family camping trips to the Wallowa mountains in E Oregon. The woods smelled like pine turpentine and smoke and there was dry lightning every afternoon. I think that was the year there was a big fire in Hell's Canyon and the sheriff went into all the bars and restaurants in town asking every man he could find to get on the fire lines. They weren't so big on qualifications and training as they are nowadays.
Haven't had any big fires in N Idaho for a long time. One of the last big ones, before my time, I guy I know was driving a D8 cat and the fire got too close so he parked it in the open near a bridge and hustled himself out of there. When he went back after the fire, the cat and the bridge were literally melted.
I better get serious about my old M211 brush rig this spring. I didn't do much on it last year because the woods were plenty wet. Anybody have instructions for how to adjust the automatic tranny on these things?
Follow Ups: