The Glade 4.0

I assume most here have heard of the wildfires in Alberta, Canada. Crazy stuff. I gotta say, I can't understand why the evacuations seem to be taking place in such a calm and orderly fashion at the last possible freakin' minute! Seriously, have you seen some of these videos, with miles of traffic just calmly driving along with the fire literally raging in the trees by the side of the road. Check out 1:50 of the first video in particular.







Wtf were people thinking waiting until this point to get out? Was there an unexpected shift in the fire's direction or something? How are the emergency services directing people down those roads? From what I've seen/read of other wildfires, these things can spread incredibly fast and could easily run right across those roads in a matter of seconds if the wind shifted. Just seems insane to me.

About 1 in 5 residents of Fort McMurray are relocated Newfies.

I'm not sure that that is relevant to any of this.

I live far closer to Orlando FL (approx. 1700 kms) than I do to Fort McMurray (approx. 2700 kms). Your guess is as good as mine.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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The smoke drifted down to my hometown for a while. I lived in Silent Hill for a day or two.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

What kind of axe murderers live there?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And did you have to play the piano to open your bathroom door, or anything like that?

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Yes. Had to find crests to get into the fridge, and play Chopsticks to turn on the TV.

Dad wanted to change it to the Funeral March to get into the bathroom, but that went over like a lead balloon.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

...

Where do you live?

Ft. McMurray is in northern Alberta, which is 1500 KMs (over 900 miles) to the border with Montana. They're not seeing the wildfire smoke in Edmonton or Calgary, which are also too far away from Fort McMurray, despite being in the same province.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

As of May 6 No large fires in Montana were reported.

There might be a smaller local fire going on though.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Iowa, unless it's changed.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Iowa indeed.

It was last weekend, as I recall, and that was definitely not fog.

No major fires in the area were reported, and I was under the impression that there was some major drift to the smoke.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

What part of Iowa? I'm almost an hour from Ottumwa.

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The Dude abides.

Right between Council Bluffs and Des Moines, tiny town off the interstate.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

I don't doubt it wasn't fog - you saw something odd. I just doubt Ft. McMurray would be the source of your smoke. You are 1,300+ miles southeast of Ft. McMurray, with cities like Regina, Saskatoon, and Fargo between you reporting no such smoke.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Looks like it was from a wildfire in Minnesota:

That makes way more sense.

(As a gloating point, Aizle, if you ever still check this forum - note on the map I posted that I live SOUTH of you! Muahahaha.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I have all of you beaten in that department.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Do we have no gladers in Florida? Seems to me Miami is south of even Brownsville (southernmost Texas city)

Anyway, it's counterintuitive that parts of Ontario are south of the entire states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusettes, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North AND South Dakota, Montana, and Washington. (I'm not on the southern tip of Ontario, but I'm still south of places like Minneapolis, Green Bay, Seattle and Portland (Both Maine AND Oregon.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I don't think we do any more. I can't think of anyone who was a Floridian off the top of my head.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Vlad's a Floridian these days (or, was, last time I heard), but I want to say he's in the panhandle, so doesn't beat DE.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Does where I was born count?

That is what I get for not doing my due diligence.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

I love Puerto Rico.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I hear it might be for sale, cheap!

In the immortal words of Joe Walsh...

My father was stationed at the long closed Ramey Air Force Base when I was born. My birth certificate in written in spanish (which made enlisting the Air Force quite a challenge).

Shortly after my birth he was transferred to Norton AFB in California. I wish I had a nickel for every time he told the story about how the Air Force only flew him (us) to the east coast (North Carolina I believe), and he had to drive across the country in an old beater car with no AC. This was in August of 1963 mind you, driving across the south and southwest on the way to Southern California. Wife, 7 year old, 4 year old, and a six month old. Just listening to him tell it was painful. I guess I was quite unhappy with the circumstances and made it very well known.

This happened to grandparents around the same time. The Coast Guard transferred my grandfather from Buffalo to Gulfport, Mississippi in around 1962 or so. My grandfather had to get down there and report and my grandmother followed in the car with my mom and my 2 aunts; my mom would have been 14 and my aunts 13 and 9. My mom really liked Buffalo, and being a 14-year-old girl I guess made her opinion quite clear to my grandmother the whole way, and her sisters agreed. Of course, I suppose at least they weren't fighting the entire way.

Now that I think of it, my wife got a taste of it too because the year I went to Iraq, Allison was 14. 14-year-old girls and their mothers can be counted on to butt heads at any and every opportunity (my mom did the same with my sister) and almost every single call home I made started off with some variant of "Do you know what Allison did?" Which, being 8,000 miles away, I did not.

My grandpa had also been stationed in Puerto Rico at one point too, although it was in (or near) San Juan when my mom was around 7, prior to the tour in Buffalo. She liked it, and when I was 21 and in my last summer home from college she took my sister and I there for about 4 days. San Cristobal and El Morro fortresses are really something to see.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

LTTP - I'm on the peninsula. South end of the Treasure Coast. Farsky used to have me beat by 50 miles, but I could be the Southest Glader now.

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