Summer sun spreading splendors across the mountains and valleys dries up the wet and cold from Winter and Spring. In the Rocky Mountains a little over 68-percent of wildfires are ignited by lightening in thunderstorms. With the unusually wet spring and larger than normal snowpack last winter, the summer fire season is finally upon--or should I say under the inversion in—the Bitterroot Valley.
My wife and I were looking at the smoke column rising over Lolo Peak, to the south of Missoula, yesterday afternoon.
“That’s a “BIG” fire!” she exclaimed.
I replied, “It’s sizable at the moment, but it’s not a large wildfire. If it were a large wildfire it would contain more fuel, and it would be more intense. Then you would see a “Steam Cap” over the smoke column.”
My wife and I have had the vapor/smoke discussion a number of times. She fully understands that when those individuals smoking those vapor pens, claim it’s just vapor, they are only snowballing the public. Smoke is mostly vapor. I mean, really it doesn’t take a chemist to understand that the chemical burning formula of almost every substance produces H2O, or water as a result.
Hydrogen based Fuel Source (H2) + 02= H2O+O
So when a person smokes a real cigarette, say like a Marlboro or a Salem they are actually vaping. Because when something burns it creates vapor. It’s a Greenhouse Gas.
The reason a “Stem Cap” forms over a wildfire is easily explained, but first a bit of water analogy will help us understand how that steam gas gets so high up into the Stratosphere.
A person came in a medical center one day, she was suffering from burns that were inflicted when she spilled boiling water on herself. The doctor instantly asked the lady how much water spilled over her arm. (Cracolice)
The reason he asked how much, is because water has a specific temperature. It can hold only so much heat until it vapes off at 100 Celsius. More water volume would contain more heat, and would make the burns worse. Whereas a little water would only contain a little amount of heat, and it wouldn’t have burned the woman as bad.
A wildfire pretty much follows the same set law of physics. A little bit of fuel, say on an acre of forest would only contain the ability to burn only so hot on the thermal gradient, as compared to a fire of 100 acres, which has the potential to carry many more BTU’s in it. Because a larger fire gets thermally charged by the rapid decomposition of all the molecules in the forest, all the H2O molecules from the forest that vaporize in the combustion process must go somewhere. When the vapor in the smoke gets supercharged with an influx of thermal energy, say as the fire rages ever larger below, the Thermal Physics of the Earth’s atmosphere force the H20 vapor—the stuff the vap. cig people tell you they exhale with smoking vapor cigarettes--up into the Stratosphere, and quite possibly sometimes into the Mesosphere.
(At least when vapin’, that is. Hit the thing three times, and you’re going to form “Ozone” )
3Hydrogen based Fuel Source (H2) + 302= 3H2O+O3
IT was a fascinating encounter with a perfect example. I had pretty much explained everything I’ve blogged above, to my wife, by the time we were on our way toward the Root to do a little afternoon fishing. As I rounded a corner, the smoke column from the fire burning east in Rock Creek caught my eye.
“That’s a “Steam Cap!” I explained, pointing east, back over my shoulder. “Rock Creek is experiencing a big upscale push in the thermal gradient over the fire. I.e. it is getting pretty damn hot, and the rapid change superheated the air in the column beyond its specific heat capacity and it jettisoned the steam cap up into the Stratosphere, and we can now see this anomaly sitting on top of the smoke column as pure steam and Ozone.” I took a breath.
With fire burning all around the valley, now the late summer smoke has set in. For the residents of Missoula, and in the Bitterroot Valley, looking up and seeing that the inversion has not yet set in is somewhat of a relief. People can breathe easy without all the smoke trapped under it. The inversion is inevitable, at least The Native American’s called the Missoula and Bitterroot Valley, “The Valleys of the Smoke,” because these inversions trapped the smoke emitted from late summer forest fires LONG BEFORE CHRIS COLUMBUS found the new world.
While the absence of these inversions may relieve the asthmatic lungs in the “Valley of the Swan,” the absence of these inversions do not enthuse firefighters. An inversion implies “Atmospheric Stability.” Atmospheric stability would mean there were no gale force winds driving wildfires into higher thermal gradients.
