Showing posts with label Montreal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Montreal. Show all posts

Monday, May 31, 2010

Our Smoky Dawn — The Canadian Forest Fires

The sun rose in a smoky, yellow sky.
I woke up at 4:30 AM this morning because of a strong smell of smoke and kerosene. I tried to wake up my new husband by saying, "Smoke! Honey, there is a fire somewhere!" But there was no response. So I got up and checked everywhere inside the house, including the furnace and wood stove. I went outside in the cold dawn and checked the forest, the wood pile, I checked everything. The kerosene smell came and went. But the wood fire smell, as if an entire campground started their fires in order to cook breakfast all at once, continued and at times intensified. Finally at 5:45 AM, John got up and reminded me of the forest fires in Quebec. "Ohhhh," I said. "Thank goodness." That was an unfortunate choice of words, because many people in Quebec are suffering and working hard to stop the fires. But I was relieved to have confirmed that there was no fire here. In Portland, Maine the fire department is getting an unprecedented number of calls because of people fearing a fire nearby.

Conditions in Montreal are much worse than here.

Here is a map I made from the resources at https://nofc1.cfsnet.nfis.org/mapserver/cwfis/index.phtml. The red states are New England. The yellow star is where we live in Vermont.

The moon this morning in the western, hazy sky.
Waning gibbous moon, 88% of full


diigo it
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Sunday, October 07, 2007

The Portland Montreal Pipe Line

::Portland Montreal Pipe Line:: About us
BG, a kind gentleman from Maine, e-mailed me about the Portland Montreal Pipe Line, whose warning sign I blogged about yesterday.  He sent me this link to the PMPL site. It's full of fascinating information: the pipeline opened in 1941 and is approximately 236 miles (or approximately 380 km) long.  It sends oil from Portland, Maine ("the largest oil port on the US East Coast") north to Montreal. It was built because of the need, during World War II, "to safely transport vital oil when enemy warships interrupted tanker traffic bound for refineries in Canada." I haven't heard of any problems with this pipeline. But when a problem happens, it will be a dozy. This is crude oil, and it's dangerous stuff. 

According to a Petroleum Administration Defense District map, this seems to be the only pipe line in New England.

Now I'm wondering if a hike along the pipeline (to Portland going south or to Montreal going north) is possible. Sounds interesting. There's a lot of history in this pipeline. Below is a very crude map, provided by PMPL, of the route the pipeline takes:

Thank you, BG, for the information.

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

My First Contrail Photo

We never used to get any planes flying over us! But lately there are a lot. Sometimes five at once. They all come from Montreal.
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