Cameron Peak Fire Update

 The winds have shifted, blowing the ash plume and smoke to the North of us. The sun even peeked out for a while.

And right before the winds shifted, and picked up, there was a quiet period where it looked like snow, and some more piled up on the cars.

Now it's all blown away. A large amount came in the garage, but SLW and I swept it all out, and I moved things around, so she could get her little car inside for the night.

This was the fire map as of this morning:

 This the most recent map:

The map below shows the current burn area in black, and yesterday's burn area in white. It really blew-up overnite. 

 

The winds have picked up some more, the temperature is down to 64*, and the barometer is climbing. NWS is predicting heavy, wet snow, with accumulations of 2"~6" here in the foothills, and 8"~18" in the mountains. It probably won't stick around much past Wednesday, but the forecast is for a 40%~50% chance of rain here in the foothills.

OK, Who Had "Ghost Riders In The Sky" for September?

 This is downright spooky. It's High Noon here, and the security light turns on when you walk past it.

This is what it looks like to the South and SW:

And the color is pretty accurate; a sickly orange-yellow.

I thought the ashfall was heavy yesterday, but look at today:

And it's heavy enough to see in the street:

But there's rain, snow, and more rain in the forecast:

Labor Day

Areas of smoke. Sunny, with a high near 90. South wind 5 to 14 mph becoming west northwest. Winds could gust as high as 21 mph.

Tonight

Rain before 5am, then rain and snow. Areas of smoke before 7pm. Areas of blowing dust between 8pm and 1am. Low around 32. Windy, with a north wind 14 to 19 mph increasing to 26 to 31 mph in the evening. Winds could gust as high as 47 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Tuesday

Rain and snow, becoming all snow after 1pm. High near 33. Windy, with a north wind 20 to 25 mph decreasing to 13 to 18 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 38 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.

Tuesday Night

Snow likely, mainly before 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 28. Northeast wind 6 to 9 mph, with gusts as high as 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible.

Wednesday

A 50 percent chance of snow before 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 43. East wind 5 to 7 mph becoming south southeast in the afternoon.

Wednesday Night

A slight chance of rain before 11pm, then a slight chance of rain and snow between 11pm and 1am, then a chance of rain after 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 32. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Thursday

A 30 percent chance of rain, mainly after 1pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 54.

Thursday Night

A chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 37.

Friday

A chance of rain, mainly before 7am. Mostly sunny, with a high near 69.

 

The fire is now well over 40,000 acres, having expanded by 10,000 acres on Saturday/Sunday.

The Easternmost lobe of the fire is now 23 miles away. Yesterday it was 38 miles away. I would expect it to continue expanding and coming closer until it either burns out from lack of fuel, hits the firebreaks they're scrambling to build, or the rain and snow put it out.

SLW heard on the teevee today that it could burn for another month.

 

One of the other fires West of the Rockies is now the largest fire ever recorded in the state of Colorado.

Misc Bits and Pieces and Smoke In The Air

 Ordered some shear pins and "drift cutters" for the Ariens DeLuxe 24 I'll be picking up next week. I'd really like a Honda, but I'm not paying $2300, and the only used ones I've been finding are the 30" monsters that have tracked drive. I could do the whole neighborhood with one of those, but wouldn't have any place to store it!

And I got a new "work table" for the garage:

It's 72" long, and 30" wide. Quite an improvement from it's little brother who measures out at 48" long by 24" wide:

 

Yes, the Supra still slumbers....I have a few more spots to apply the filler to before I start sanding it all down. I've been using my flashlight held parallel to the bumper surface to highlight the defects, and found a few more patches of bad sanding scuffs from the hand-held oscillating sander I used.

Sweet Little Wife got a wheelbarrow at at garage sale for $5. Every single nut and bolt was "finger loose", and the tire hadn't seen air in quite a while. Spent some time cleaning it up a bit, got it squared up and tightened the hardware down, and put some air in the tire. It's held 30psi for 48 hours now, so I'm hoping the tube in the tire isn't completely shot. And while I had it apart I put some "Red Sticky Synthetic" grease on the axle and the bushing inside the wheel. So now we have a decent little wheelbarrow to move mulch from the pick-up bed to the flower bed, all for $5 and some of my time.

And I painted the pinch welds under the rocker panels on the truck today. I have the steps assembled, and now I have to mount the brackets. There are pre-punched, capped  holes on the inside of the rocker. You remove two rubber plugs, slip a clip nut into each hole, and then mount the bracket to the rocker panel. Then the steps get mounted to the brackets, and it's done.

SLW thought I was being all "Adrian Monk" about doing this, and then she walked by 10 minutes later and said it looked very nice. I didn't think to take a "before" picture, but it does look cleaner.

Sunday is the last "Summer" family get together, Monday is mount the steps day, and Tuesday or Wednesday will be pick-up a snowblower day. That should give me adequate time to put it together, go over the checklist, and run it a bit before I have to use it. I was surprised to find out most snowblowers run the engine without an air cleaner. I'm pretty sure you can get an air cleaner kit for it, so I might look into that. The air is usually pretty clean when you're blowing snow, but I'd feel better if it had an air cleaner on it to run it this time of year, and do the preseason maintenance on it.

The smoke today is very heavy. We have ash and half-burned pine needles ( ! ) all over the cars, and the light outside has eerie orange color to it. This is from the Cameron Peak fire, which is now up to almost 25,000 acres, and is 6% contained. This last week of hot, dry weather caused it to pick up some steam. Hopefully the rain and snow on Monday and Tuesday will knock it back and give the firefighters a break. Lord knows they need it, and some prayers, too.

 

A burnt pine needle to the left, a green one to the right. SLW's car had one that was green on half it's length, and charred black on the other half!

 

If you stand outside for 5 or 10 minutes, you'll start to notice the ash coming down, like little snowflakes from hell.

 

The smoke is dense enough to show up as "rain" on the weather radar. Normally when you're inside an area that color green, you're getting sprinkled on.

Snow In The Forecast.....Already??

 Just checked the weather for the coming weekend, and I see the NWS is calling for snow on Tuesday, with a high of 43*F.

Tuesday night is forecast to have a low of 30*F. The Average low is 48*F, and the record is 18*F, so while "Unseasonably Cold" could be said, it won't break a record.

But SNOW?

I know WSF has been snowed on in every single month here, but if we get some snow, it'll be a first for us here. Local wisdom is we always have at least one snow before Halloween, so I'll ask the clan about September Snow at our Labor Day gathering on Sunday.

Must be Global Warming.....

Bumper Work

 After laying down a good coat of primer, and waiting for it to completely cure, I sanded it down, cleaned it, and shot another coat of primer on it. That, too, sat a week to let it completely cure.

Using bright lights, I found a bunch more divots and ripples, and some sanding scratches. 

SO.....I mixed up some more of the "Bumper Bite", and applied it:

And in the process of using the bright lights to really see things, I found a few more little spots that need filler:

And if you look carefully, just below the masking, you can see a few more:

So, after I have some dinner, I'll mix up some more filler, and try and get all the little spots that I missed.

And I expect to do it again, after the next round of sanding.

Bye-Bye Electric Snow Blower!

Put it on nextdoor.com, and sold it for $300. 

Yeah, I took an almost $600 hit for two seasons of use, but it's out of here. I even "delivered" it to the guy who came down this morning to buy it.

He'd read all the online reviews of it, and agreed with me on it's limitations, and is prepared to put up with them. He's from Wisconsin, has owned and used snowblowers, and knows snow at least as well as I do. We both commented on how "nice" the snow is here, all fluffy and dry compared to the sludge that used to blanket us back in the Midwest.

I put the batteries in and ran it, and showed him how all the controls worked. He was very pleased with the condition it was in, and how clean it was, and the fact I had the manuals, tool kit, and all the misc parts that originally came with it.

He and his wife are moving out of their townhouse here in FoCo, and moving in to a new house up in Wellington. The HOA at their new place does the streets and sidewalks, but not the driveways, so unless his driveway is significantly larger than ours, this thing should easily handle it.

He didn't want to be "bothered" with a gas engine snowblower (sound familiar?), but had researched them, and recommended a Toro for my new one.

So he was happy, handed me three Benjamins, we loaded it in the back of the Colorado, and I followed him back to his place. It would have barely fit in his Subie Outback, and we would have had to take the handlebars and discharge chute off.

With a little truck sitting right next to it, why bother?

So now I have to decide on what the replacement unit will be, get one, and RTFM. Leaning towards the Ariens "DeLuxe 24" at this point, but if I get a screaming deal on a good, used Honda, I'll probably go for that.

Winter is coming, and I don't want to get caught flat-footed.....

"Side Assist Steps" for the New Truck

 Even though it's not too bad climbing in and out of the truck, I'm thinking ahead to Winter when you may not have good footing. GM offered a cool looking set of steps for $800, plus installation, and I thought that was a bit too much.

After going through the ColoradoFans.com forum, and doing some googling, I found a set of "iArmor" side steps for $300, with Free Shipping.

 Took about  five days to get here, and they arrived in excellent condition. I spent a few hours last night going through all the parts, and assembling the step to the support rails.

 

These are a nice design, made from square aluminum tubing, and the step sections appear to be die-cast aluminum, with a whole lotta bolts to secure them to the support rails.

 

Most of the welds look to be "acceptable" to me, as seen below, but one on the other rail assembly looked a little funky to me.

"OK" weld:

"Funky" weld:

Not as pretty as I'd like, and it sure ain't no "Stack of Dimes" weld!

These steps are "rated" to support 300lbs, and I think they'll be OK.

And we now have some fully-cured primer, ready to apply another layer of filler, followed by more sanding.

I'll get back on that tonight. I have to get some rattle can bedliner to spray the "pinch welds" with on the truck before I install the new steps. That will cover the RED paint on the under the rocker panel on the truck so it doesn't come blazing through the gaps and openings in the new steps, giving the truck a more "finished" appearance.

Lewstone Fire 100% Contained; Rist Canyon Evacuation Orders Lifted

 Much thanks to the Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department, and the Poudre Fire Authority for getting this contained, and mopped up. This fire was near Morning Fresh Dairy Farm, right next door to the Noosa Yoghurt plant where the kids work, and the dairy people were feeding all the firefighters courtesy of their "Howling Cow Cafe" operation.

We went out yesterday to The Rock Garden, a local supplier of decorative rock up on the North end of town. They have pallets full of different types of "flagstone", in sizes from small bits and pieces, up to boulders you'd need to call the Army Corps of Engineers to move. Most of the rock is excavated from their own quarry a few miles away, so it really is a local operation. And the people we met there were quite a bunch of characters.

We picked up a dozen pieces of "Colorado Red", each about 12" square, to use as a walkway through the little garden area we have in front of the house. Our handyman guy had put some down last year, but they were spaced too far apart, and too small in size, to be of any use in walking through the mulch to get to the water valve for sprinkling.

 

 

Those pieces are getting placed in various other parts of the yard, and the new ones will get installed over the next few days.

Tomorrow we're going back to pick out "our boulder", so we can have them etch the house number and a graphic on it, and then they'll bring it by and set it for us.

And yes, SLW wants a gen-you-ine BOULDER in the front yard. This one weighs-in at around 600lbs:

I think she wants a bigger one, but that picture from The Rock Garden was handy. I'm thinking more of a "slab" of rock that we can prop up in the back with some smaller "boulders". The stone cutter needs one face to be nice and flat so his stencil will stick to it, and stay stuck, until he finishes sandblasting the design into the stone.

This is going to be an interesting little project, as we get to pick the font for the address, and add a graphic to it. The stonecutter does the design work on a PC with a graphics program, and then transfers the files to his "Plotter/Cutter" that makes a stencil from a rubber mat with adhesive on one side. He then sticks the mat on the rock, and uses a sandblasting rig to etch the design into the rock.

3M makes a whole line of products for this purpose, and I was first exposed to it about 40 years ago when I went to repair a BIG air compressor and the local headstone company. I asked them why such a small shop needed such a YUGE sandblaster (IIRC, it was about 60HP), and the owner proceeded to show me how they made the headstones. I'd always thought somebody sat there with a chisel, and he laughed and said they hadn't done it that for about 75 years.

So, I'm off on another tangent for a few days, along with filling, sanding, priming, and sanding some more on the Supra's front bumper, along with properly setting the new stone steppers, and other grunt work.....

Lewstone Fire Prompts Rist Canyon Evacuations

 Well, we have a much more "local" fire burning in Rist Canyon along Rist Canyon Road. This is the area the in-laws live in, and they've been getting their critical items out of there.

From the Coloradoan newspaper:

A new fire called the Lewstone Fire started north of Fort Collins on Saturday afternoon, already forcing some mandatory evacuations.

The fire started at approximately 3:30 p.m. and is just north of Rist Canyon Road (County Road 52) and Pine Acres Way.

Fire officials have ordered a mandatory evacuation for residents north of Rist Canyon Road, west of Whale Rock Road and east of the Davis Ranch Road due to "immediate and imminent danger," per the Larimer County Sheriff's Office.

Voluntary evacuations are advised for residents living south of Rist Canyon Road from Whale Rock Road and all areas to the west up to Davis Ranch Road.

"You are encouraged to move livestock and pets out of the area and to prepare for mandatory evacuations. For updates, text the word LEWSTONE to 888777 from your cell phone. We will communicate information to that key word as needed. Please do not call 9-1-1 unless you are in danger," per Larimer County Sheriff. 

The fire is approximately 30-40 acres as of 5:50 p.m., according to the Larimer County Sheriff. There are two air tankers, two heavy helicopters and 80 personnel on scene or en route.

 One of the videos I watched showed a Lockheed Electra being used as an aerial tanker, but I couldn't make out any markings on it.

And here's the map:

This is painfully close to, and overlaps some of, the area that burned in 2012, referred to as the High Park Fire. 

 

And there's NO RAIN forecast for this area until Tuesday, and then it's only a 20% chance. 

The clan's matriarch is in Cheyenne watching one of the little ones as daughter #2 just went in to the hospital for baby #2........

And on the Bumper Front.....or is that "Front Bumper"?

 Been sanding away on the first "skim coat" of the Bumper Bite flexible glaze, and I've already learned two things.

1- Go easy on the amount of hardener used

and

2- Let it cure for a good hour before hitting it with sandpaper

 

I learned #1 on the first batch I mixed. The excess hardener gave me a pot life of about 3 minutes, and the stuff kicked so hard and so fast that the spreader I was using got stuck to the bumper! It quite literally "froze" as I was wiping it on.

I learned #2 trying to clean up the mess I made learning #1.

Forgot to snap pix of the skim coat and sanding as I was busy cleaning it off, wiping it down with solvent, and shaking the can of primer, which I used tonight for the first time. You really have to put this stuff down in "Medium WET" coats to get any coverage.

And this is why we prime things:

These are all flaws I missed. I could kinda-sorta feel them with my fingers, but I couldn't see them due to all the different colors of plastic, paint, and filler resin. They just disappeared into the visual "noise" of the random splotches of color, so while I could barely feel them, I couldn't see how deep they were.

These are shallow enough that the Bumper Bite should fill them, and it's MUCH easier to sand than the repair resin.

SO......after the primer fully cures, I'll carefully mix up some more Bumper Bite, and wipe a coat into all these sunken areas. Let it sit 30~45 minutes, and it sands off pretty easily, like a "lightweight" polyester filler.

More to come.....

Fun With Cardboard, Reynolds Wrap, and Packing Tape, and an EDC Question

 So The Little Guy and I built a house in the garage:

His Mom and Dad have the same chest freezer we bought, and they built a "house" for him to play in with it. I had cut-up the box ours came in to make it easier to store, and while we were out in the garage the other day playing with the bubble machine, he spotted the box and said he wanted to play "In My House". I thought he wanted to go play IN the house, but after realizing what we wanted, I grabbed my trusty packing tape gun, some extra cardboard from the "Chewy" boxes we have, and we proceeded to put his house together.

It's a nice little house, with a window:

 

And a comfy chair:

 

And even a wall-mount TV so he can watch "Paw Patrol":

And up on the roof, we have a Satellite, and a chimney for his pellet stove!

When he said he wanted a "Satellite!" on the roof, I think he meant a satellite dish for getting his "Paw Patrol" fix on his TV, but he said "satellite", so I made him one.

If you squint your eyes a bit, and put on some blue lenses, it kinda-sorta resembles a Hughes HS-376:

Maybe.......

Anyway, we had fun building his new house here, and I suspect he'll want some "improvements" in the near future.......

EDC Question:

All my training has been with a 1911 pistol. I can run it in the dark, and keep it running, and just about do a field-strip and clean in a black bag, and get it back together with no left over parts. I can smoothly transition from/to pistol, rifle, or shotgun, and prior to that tragic boating accident some time ago, I had two full-size Kimbers, a TLE-II, and a Custom Shop Eclipse. Also had a Sig P-226 in 40S&W, and the barrel to convert it to 357SIG. The magazines are the same.

BUT, a full-size 1911 is a bit hard to CC on me, unless I'm out camping or "off roading", so something "smaller" is desired.

Browning makes a sweet little "1911" in 380, and I'm sorely tempted, but I'd prefer something with a bit more muzzle energy.

I've never fired a "Compact" 1911, or even a "Colt Commander" sized one, so I'm hesitant to just jump on one of those.

Yes, I have a strong "1911 Bias" here, and I freely admit it. Perhaps a compact 1911 in 9mm?

What say you?