Also, check out wundermap. Click off weather stations and scroll down and click on fire and active fire but not fire risk. That’s a lot of smoke!

http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap

It is not just a reduction in logging that leads to increased fire danger but also fire suppression. Fire is a natural part of life for forests and suppressing fires causes an increase of fuel buildup.

To make our forests really healthy, we would need to go in and limb the lower dead branches off trees, pull out a lot of downed trees, and clear underbrush. It is highly labor intensive and would cost a lot of money, so it will never be done.

Oregon is no stranger to big fires either. There is a book called, The Big Burn, that is about a big fire in the early 1900’s.

I don’t think the PNW has had any “extreme” weather this year, although there wasn’t much of a snowpack, which is also fairly common. People can come up with any excuse they want but the reality is that fire is a part of nature in the PNW.