COC050 New Fire- Not Worried at the Moment, Here's Why!There is indeed a new fire about 15km away from PWM's property, however it's nowhere near as dangerous as earlier in the summer. Did you know there was already a fire in almost the same location as the new one (a swamp) in June that was put out in a matter of days? I do think there's going to be some negative selling action as a result, but things are nowhere near as critical as they were in June due to very different weather conditions and firefighters already being in the area. Analysis to follow!
TLDR Very different weather conditions now unfriendly to fires, rain on the horizon, Lake Abitibi and a fire in the same area created a large natural fire break between PWM and the new fire, fire crews are active in region from the get-go, not worried at the moment but stay watchful!
My primary source for the fire is the Ontario Governments Interactive Fire Map. Meteorological assessments come from WINDY's CAPE Index for windspeeds and direction, and Accuweather for radar and weather.
Cochrane 050 was spotted on August 15 at 10:00AM . At this time, the fire was approximately 1 hectare in size. The primary worry at this point is that PWM's property lies potentially downwind of the fire if it shifts- so why aren't you more worried Nafets?
To understand why this isn't overly worrying to me, we need to look at COC006, Cochrane 006, which occurred in the same place during peak fire season.
Cochrane 006 was spotted June 2 approximately 2km north of where COC 050 started. At this point in the summer, conditions were significantly drier, winds were stronger and the temperature was higher. In addition to this, firefighters would not arrive in the region until almost a week later. Despite all this, due to its location, COC 006 was still not able to spread in the same manner as COC007.
Fast forward to now with COC050, conditions are rated 'low' fire risk for the region instead of 'extreme;' as they were in June with humidity hovering in the 40's instead of the single digits, the wind is sluggish for the next couple of days, there are firefighters within kilometers as they are active in the region, the wind speed and direction (North) doesn't point towards Case Lake for a few days, and a predicted wind shift East and North East later this week is also probably bringing rain Thursday. In addition to this, firefighters aren't preoccupied with the Malta-sized behemoth COC007.
As I noted already COC050 started south of COC006 (it might actually be a re-emergence of COC006, which moved southward). The current wind direction for the next two days is a sluggish north- which just so happens to be the area already burned by COC006 and is a natural fire break. A shift east pushes this into Lake Abitibi.
The main concern here is an unpredicted major shift in conditions which would cause the reimplementation of restrictions in the area, or damage PWM's property/assets. An unforeseen dry summer storm with intense east moving winds and lightning could very well make this hit PWM right in the jewels. I noted in an earlier post, very poorly worded, that literally anything can happen, and this is a great, if unfortunate, example. If it was June's conditions at the moment, I would be 'building' brick's to put it euphemistically. But at this moment, I'm not overly concerned. I'll link the fire map below, but I also know that links in random forums are like poison to many, so just google "Forest Fire Info Map Ontario" for the same result.
https://www.lioapplications.lrc.gov.on.ca/ForestFireInformationMap/index.html?viewer=FFIM.FFIM
Not the news that we wanted, but hey its news! You guys were asking for news!!! (Just joshing <3) Definitely stay watching though, and if I see things getting iffy, you'll see a post stating as much. You can use those sources to keep an eye on things yourself to get ahead of me if things take a turn though! What we don't want is strong dry winds blowing from the fire to the property.
For now, I'm not worried so let's see how things play out. I'm long on this, so I'm adopting a hunker down and see how it plays out, but if that's not you, this is when I would start pre-emptively looking at your options. If you made it all the down here, as always, I hope your day gets better, good stuff will come down the pipe eventually- hang in there stranger, we'll be okay it's a rough day on the market in general and things will get better <3