Don’t mind me, I am just the “Pattern Guy.” I notice things… and now I’m reporting things.
For the past six weeks I’ve watched as the DeathStars (weird clouds) deliver their daily beams down on the western wildfires; mainly California but also Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Montana. The geostationary NOAA satellite (with selectable sensor frequency bands) provides excellent coverage of this show for those interested (i.e., Band-14 is surface temperature). A solid black dot means the infrared sensor pixel was saturated–maximum heat was registered at that geographic location. The presence, timing and intensity of these “IRhits” as I call them, cannot be attributed to “continuity of fuel, poor forestry practices, dead trees, drought and wind conditions,” even collectively. Not enough BTUs I say. Climate experts say that the intense heat is effect and I contend it is the cause, an EXTERNAL cause, mind you. No IRhits (Band-7) means no volcanic plumes of smoke (Band-2) and no odd bright flashes of light (Band-5). Today was different. Other than a couple of small IRhits on the CA-McCash fire, today was the FIRST day in six weeks that Oregon and California were not being hammered with external energy. Hammering is repeated and prolonged application of IRhits; peppering is a hit here, a hit there, lets all have a hit, you know?
Yesterday, I noticed IRhit peppering in eastern Missouri and Arkansas along the Mississippi, up to maybe 40-miles(?) west of the river until dark. Did they return today? Good question you ask. Yes, they started up in the early afternoon I think. Armed with a month of observing this enemy, I switched to Band-2 and sure enough, little plumes of smoke started appearing where them IRhits had been. Unlike the west, this area is mainly fields with little fuel for a prolonged fire. Please don’t suggest it was farmers burning their fields–I know they do. These ain’t them. To register solid black dots, it needs to be an inferno like we saw on the news every night about the Dixie and Caldor fires. Even today with those western fires burning “normally” (cooler, without external energy) they only show up as light gray dots or not at all. To generate the 10-15 minute ONLY plumes of smoke in Missouri-Ark and still be discernable from space, requires some serious heat. These fires did not persist. Hit-puff-gone over here, hit-puff-gone over there. All over the place but only along the same 20-30 counties. This was not happening anywhere else in the country. Over the course of the day there had to be many hundreds if not a few thousand hits. Surely there were a lot of calls coming in, right? I don’t think so, maybe five percent, dunno. You see, the smoke from all them western fires had conveniently arrived overhead and provide a good reason for smoke in the area. And being so rural, most of the plumes were likely attributed to Farmer Bob on the other side of the back forty burning in his field.
I would have missed the connection to the fault line, however, I kinda called a sheriff office in one of the counties. My intent was to get some eyes on the ground if possible. After teaching deputy to use the NOAA website and getting her to see what I saw, she mentioned that the hits were along the New Madrid fault. My jaw dropped. I stopped caring about a lot of things in that moment. There were those recent quakes in Haiti and Mexico. There are even videos of weird “lightning” on the horizon as the earthquake hit in Mexico.
Read up on USGS assessment of the 1811-1812 series of quakes–they made waves in the river run upstream. It was a huge event and is still a real fault. And now, out of all the areas in the country, THAT area is registering a series brief but intensely hot fires, the likes of which were previously seen in California… with its many fault lines? Aggghhh!
I believe intense surface heat is the secondary purpose of all this energy delivery; primary is getting that directed energy into the earth. The California Dixie fire is so broad there are 60 miles between the NW and SE ends of the fire and… hey… whadya know, there are multiple faults along that Sierra Nevada stretch there in Lassen Natl Park. Further north is the Antelope fire with more faults. Caldor fire has one fault line. These three fires have been hammered HARD with IRhits this past week.
They can burn any city with impunity (e.g., Santa Rosa 2017), but instead concentrated most of the energy on these and other fires.
The Midwest rivers have to be running very high with heavy rains upstream in all direction this past month. Any quake in the area would result in busted levees I’m sure. Memphis is very close by. Anyhow, I hope I am wrong about New Madrid and everyone can laugh at newbie’s first post. Given all that has been happening around the world though, something seems imminent.
-Pattern Guy
