Saddle road closed due to fire

[TomK]

Anyone have any news on the Saddle Road closure this morning? All I know is that the entire road has been closed due to a bushfire. Looking at some of the mountain webcams, one or two may be seeing the smoke from it but am not sure.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/li...vecam.html

I think the third one from the bottom shows the plume (note that the picture is flipped for some reason, east is to the right). If that is a smoke plume in the saddle it looks quite big.

I've saved the current picture at http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~tkerr/mkcam-fire.jpg

[TomK]

The smoke seems to be visible in the GOES satellite images as well: http://mkwc.ifa.hawaii.edu/satellite/

One of the saved images here (with smoke just above and left of centre): http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~tkerr/sat-image.gif

[csgray]

We drove over to the other side and back yesterday and noticed how horribly dry everything was, not just Kona and Kohala, but the Saddle too. Places that usually manage to stay green were dry, the ironwoods, wiliwili, and eucalyptus were all either dead or dying and the only green was right along the road. We commented on how easy it would be for the whole thing to go up in flames. Hope they have lots of people on this, or the whole saddle could burn.

Carol

[dmbwest]

Same same everything here Carol. It seemed as if one spark would cause the whole zone to explosively combust. Was even talking to my little guy about the blackend trees.

aloha,
pog

[csgray]

If this is a La Nina year as predicted, we may get enough rain (and snow on Mauna Kea) to green things back up. I really feel for the farmers and ranchers, both in Kohala and Waimea, and in Ka'u. Now I understand why so many horses are being sold on craigslist by people who have to "reduce the herd". There is nothing left to graze on. This is the only side of the island that still is green!

Carol

[Loretta]

There was a brush fire today near "Four Corners" up on one of the cinder cones on the side of the road to the lighthouse. We heard the call on our police scanner, and saw the smoke when we drove by there about 1:30pm. It sounded like it was somewhat difficult to access. I believe they had it under control within an hour or so. They were calling out quite a bit of manpower, etc. to help fight this one. Definitely scary when things are so dry.

[Chuysmom]

While driving back from Kapoho Saturday at around 2:30-ish I drove through a big cloud of smoke but saw no plume. Anyone know anything about that one?

Carrie

http://www.sapphiresoap.etsy.com

"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future..." Galadriel LOTR

[csgray]

When we went through there yesterday the wind was just ripping through the Saddle. That is a big part of what makes wildfires so scary up there. And seeing so much usually drought hardy vegetation dead and dying was a real eye opener. Everyone, lets all visualize a snow capped Mauna Kea this winter.

Carol

[TomK]

The latest I've heard is that the Saddle Road is open again although they are diverting traffic onto the old road (the message I have doesn't say exactly where). It also seems power lines were affected which has buggered up some of the observatories on the summit! I can't find any mention of the fire on the civil defense web pages.

The saddle area and mountain slopes have been the driest I think I can remember. As Carol mentions, the trades have been particularly strong at upper elevations for a week or two now and am sure that's making things even worse.

Tom

[Aaron S]

I would bet they are diverting traffic on the old Saddle Road southwest of m.m 29 and Mauna Kea Access Road. This roadway connects to the new Saddle Road by m.m 35 and Mauna Kea State Park.