Does anybody really like overly thick forests? So it was good news when the Forest Service was doing some prescribed burns in early May in Idaho. Conditions turned out to be too wet, according to what one guy told me.
It is quite something how versatile and powerful drones have gotten, and not just in war! I stumbled onto the parking area for a drone-operating crew. The drone was colored like a World War II battle tank, and was about 3 feet in diameter. If you have only seen toy-like quadrocopters before, this thing would make you stop in your tracks. I thought about what drones are doing in current wars.
Of course I wanted to pepper the operators with questions, but guys with a job to do can only spend so much time answering questions. It was a quadro-copter, and ran on batteries. But how did it help out with prescribed burns?
I imagined it shooting out a flame-thrower based on some kind of fuel. But they do something much cleverer. Go to You Tube and search for 'forest aerial ignition.' My favorite video was this one
Overnight, the smoke would settle in certain flat spots. That was not a good place to camp. Or exercise.
Meanwhile I was up to my old tricks. If not looking for cloud shadows, it was flower shadows:
It is not easy dancing around these forest guys when they are doing prescribed burns. Their work is so weather dependent: wind, moisture, temperature. There was no chance they would work under the conditions we had a couple weeks ago:
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