At a press conference following a tour of the fires in Arizona John McCain said: “There is substantial evidence that some of these fires are caused by people who have crossed our border illegally”.

Excuse me, but I have been following these fires, and wildfires in general pretty closely and the only border violation I’m aware of is the Monument Fire, which started in Arizona and then burned 1526 acres of Mexico.

Having lived in Southern California, I can tell you that the undocumented don’t do things that will attract attention to themselves, and fires in the Southwest attract a lot of attention.

Authorities are talking to two “people of interest” in the Wallow Fire, but no one has said anything about their immigration status.

They aren’t as large as those out West, but with the drought Florida has wildfires too, and one of them just turned lethal:

From WTSP in Tampa: Wildfire kills two Florida firefighters

Tallahassee, Florida – Florida is mourning the loss of two veteran firefighters killed when a wildfire suddenly changed direction and flashed over them.

Fifty-two-year old Brett Fulton and 31-year-old Josh Burch were operating bulldozers at the front lines of the Blue Ribbon Fire in Hamilton County on Monday when they were caught in, what fire officials call, a “burn over.”

The fire was relatively small, only 12 acres, but the weather conditions changed quickly and created a firestorm.

Two other firefighters, Robert Marvin and Steve Carpenter, were injured when they ran into the flames to try to rescue their colleagues but the heat and smoke were too bad.
…

Florida is having one of its worst wildfire seasons. More than 1,500 wildfires have burned about 200,000 acres across the state since May 1st.

About a quarter of that acreage was on the West border of Miami. Because of the drought, most are in what are normally marshes, which die off quickly in droughts.

Florida’s Fraudster-in-chief can’t help being a jerk. He suggested that we have a ‘rain dance’.

They have made the shift to dealing with the aftermath of the fire and have already started some of the necessary work. Personnel numbers are slowly decreasing, and people are returning to the area.

Information from the current Wallow Fire InciWeb Page

• Date Started: 5/29/2011
• Location: Apache, Navajo, Graham, and Greenlee Counties, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Reservations, Arizona; Catron County, New Mexico
• Cause: Human – under investigation
• Size: 527,774 acres [825 miles² 2136 km²] based on infrared data
• Percent Contained: 56%
• Injuries to Date: 12
• Residences: 1,551 threatened; 32 destroyed; 5 damaged
• Commercial Property: 162 threatened; 4 destroyed
• Outbuildings: 452 threatened; 36 destroyed; 1 damaged
• Other: 1 truck destroyed
• Number of Personnel: Approximately 3,483 including 11 hotshot crews and 50 hand crews
• Equipment: 19 dozers, 202 engines, 73 watertenders
• Aircraft: 15 helicopters, 5 air tankers
• Incident Commander: Jim Loach, Area Command Team 3

[Read more →]

Position: 19.0N 106.5W [ 4PM CDT 2100 UTC].
Movement: West [275°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 70 mph [110 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 995 mb ↑.

Currently about 110 miles [175 km] South-Southwest of Cabo Corrientes, Mexico.

After paralleling the coast, Beatriz is going to head out sea. It is weakening rapidly and all Watches and Warnings have been cancelled.

At 10PM CDT Beatriz is a remnant low.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Today at 12:16PM [CDT] is the Summer Solstice, technically considered the “first day of Summer”, but the mid Summer by much of Europe. [Unless you are in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case it is the Winter Solstice.]

Celts and many Wiccans celebrate the day as Litha, while computer programmers honor their predecessors, the druids, who build the first solid-state computing devices, the megaliths, like Stonehenge.

The Slavs celebrate St. John’s Night, Иван Купала [Ivan Kupala], the battle between the White god [Белобог – Belobog] and the Black god [Чёрнобог – Chyornobog] for control of the Sun. The Black god always wins and the night begins to expand.

The Finns use the same con by changing the name from Ukon Juhla to Johannes Kastaja [John the Baptist] to get the Christians off their case for holding the same celebration.

The sound track to the battle is Иванова Ночь на Лысой Горе [Night on Bald Mountain ] by Модест Петрович Мусоргский [Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky], which everyone should play very loudly.

Archæoastronomy tracks all of the important solar events, another of the many things I learned from Andante.