Life in the Mountains

Well, it's another bluebird day in Paradise! We are mostly dug out from yesterdays Snowstorm. Christmas day left us with another 18" of snow here in Bellevue. I finally finished digging out about 7:30 last night.

Today is my wife's birthday. Happy Birthday, Barbara!

The rugged central core of Idaho is a risky place to live. At least, that's the claim from a new report about the chances of being struck down by Mother Nature.
According to the study, Blaine County residents stand a better-than-average chance of being killed by natural hazards like severe winter weather than do inhabitants living in certain other Idaho counties and locations across the country. The study says that residents of Camas County are even worse off, with their chance of kicking the bucket because of natural hazards rising to the highest category included in the dour report.
Published under the innocuous title of "Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States" in the International Journal of Health Geographics, the study may make you rethink your outdoor recreation plans, if severe weather threatens. Written by University of South Carolina Geography Professor Dr. Susan Cutter and Ph.D. graduate student Kevin Borden, it assesses which regions of the country experience a higher rate of mortality at the hands of natural hazards like hurricanes, flooding, winter storms, earthquakes and wildfires.
The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The report's findings include a mixture of surprising and not-so-surprising conclusions.
"The regions most prone to deaths from natural hazards are the South and intermountain West," the study authors write.
"Significant clusters of high mortality are in the lower Mississippi Valley, upper Great Plains and mountain West," they state.
The incidence of natural hazards was broken down by 10 regions in the lower 48 states. In region 10, which covers Idaho, Oregon and Washington, severe weather—which the authors tabbed as mortality-causing events with multiple weather factors—made up nearly a third of the deaths. Next up is severe winter weather, the study indicates.

Cutter and Borden do seem to toy with the idea that personal choices may be a factor that controls the safety of those living in more natural-hazard-prone regions of the country like central Idaho.
"An important question is whether people in areas of high mortality know what to do (or what not to do) when a hazard event occurs," they say.

Castle Rock Update

Castle Rock Fire, Sawtooth National ForestRehabilitation Update - WildlifeSeptember 9, 2007
“From a wildlife perspective, this fire has created a lot of patches across the landscape that will produce different age classes, which will be good for wildlife habitat.” -Bobbi Filbert, Wildlife Biologist on the Burned Area Emergency Response Team
The Castle Rock Fire burned in a mosaic pattern, leaving islands of green interspersed with black. It is important to note, however, in some of the upper reaches of the fire, there were pockets of forest that burned at a very high intensity.
Several weeks have passed since the fire burned through some areas of the forest and tender succulent shoots are already growing in the burn area along Warm Springs Road. Recovery in other areas will take a lot longer.
During the winter, elk depend upon the bitterbrush, snowberry, and grasses lying beneath the snow on south-facing slopes. These slopes in Warm Springs and Greenhorn Gulch burned and will not have an opportunity to resprout before the snows fly in the next few months. This winter and next may be difficult ones for the elk herds. In future years, the elk will find plenty of food and herds will be stronger and larger than ever.
There are concerns about impacts from the burn to the winter elk range and the possibility of the introduction of non-native and noxious weeds. The U.S. Forest Service does not want to lose winter range to invasive species and scientists and specialists are in the process of assessing and making recommendations for both emergency stabilization and long-term recovery of the elk winter range on the Forest.

Idaho Wild Fire

The Castle Rock Fire, just 17 miles north of my home, reached status as the #1 priority fire in the USA.