2019 wildfire season: Upper Yukon Alaska wildfires

I have been writing about the wildfires in Alaska of late, see for example my July 26th post about the New Jersey Forest Fire crew, NJS#1 that was deployed to Alaska and my August 2nd post about crews from the continental United States deployed to Alaska. I wanted to do something a little different today, I will get to that in a moment. First, I went to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center to look at the latest Situation Report from the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center (August 8, 2019), the latest situation report may be found here so the numbers I am presenting here (taken from the August 8th Situation Report) may be different from the latest Situation Report. As of Thursday August 8th, there have been 615 wildfires in Alaska this year that have burned 2,434,032.3 acres where lightning caused wildfires account for 2,391,207 acres, new and or staffed wildfires account for 511,541.8 acres with the difference in acreage representing wildfires in monitoring status.

Always looking for something a little different, as I was today, I checked out Mike Archer's Wildfire News of the Day (go here for subscription information). In his August 5th edition of his Wildfire News of the Day e-mail, I found a nice story from Must Read Alaska showcasing drone footage of the 500,000 acre Chalkitsik Complex (upper Yukon). The Chalkitsik Complex has a page on inciweb. The drone aka (UAS) footage is from the AKIMT/BLM AFS Alaska Fire Service/DNR Alaska Division of Forestry. The video below was embedded in the Must Read Alaska article, uploaded by the 2019 AKUYD Chalkyitisk Complex.


Direct link to video from the 2019 AKUYD Chalkyitisk Complex

I then went to Alaska Fire Info to see if I could find any interesting photographs and I was in luck. I found a nice photo essay from a wildland firefighter from the Tanana Chiefs Initial Attack Crew, the photo essay is dated August 8th and an August 7th photo essay of the Chalkyitisk  Complex. The Chalkyitisk Complex is, if I am not mistaken, located in the Upper Yukon in Alaska, Alaska Fire Info posted an update about the status of the wildfires burning in the Upper Yukon, with a map here.