Jake and I had a chance to skip out of Bozeman late yesterday afternoon; we’d both had a busy day working on real life projects, and decided it was worth a run up the Gallatin Canyon to fish for a few hours. 

After a brilliantly clear sky weekend, it was decidedly smoky as we headed up the canyon on 191, and by the time we arrived in Big Sky, it was so smoky we estimated their had to be a fire burning in the Madison drainage just over the ridge.  The skies cleared a bit by the time we hit the northern Park border, and we had a great several hours pulling little rainbows out of a couple of long glides.  Caddis and small Stims early, with a mayfly spinner fall late. 

To our relief there is not a new fire burning in either Montana or Wyoming, though in essence the entire central and western sections of Montana and the panhandle of Idaho are under a red flag warning today. 

Fishing around on the web to fire where the smoke came from yesterday, I remembered the Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center in Salt Lake City has some amazing applications to look at fire locations using maps they prepare, satellite imaging, and Google Earth.  Their fire mapping site is called the MODIS Active Fire Mapping Program, and is worth a look if you’re interested in some fascinating mapping technology. 

The fire that pumped the smoke over our way last night was the Willow WFU, which on the MODIS site today is noted to have increased 50% yesterday to 1825 acres; interestingly the site is not currently listed as an active fire on Inciweb.  The fire is burning about 11 miles northwest of Island Park, ID. 

The pic above is the full moon (they call it a fire moon) through the smoke over Bozeman last night, and the one below the late sun on the upper Gallatin. 

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