One Scary Afternoon in Great Falls!

I was suppose to work yesterday!  But after I was up, showered, dressed and enjoying a coffee the infamous phone call came in.  They had to fly a baby out and I was just on call!  At least they reached me before I got up to the unit.  But there was no going back to sleep.

I managed to fill up my morning and after lunch I went out to the fair with Curtis to observe the judging of the digital photos for the fair.

We had seen this weird cloud on the way to the fair grounds.

Pyrocumulus clouds form over wildfires due to intense heat rising into the sky.

At the time we didn't know what it was!  But there had been a grass fire north of town started by a spark from farm machinery! It is currently harvest time.  It is so dry here from the heat of summer and it was very hot yesterday.

Curtis and I came  home and got dinner started.  He went out to start the BBQ and a few minutes later when he went out to put the meat on, it was so, so smokey!  You could see the smoke plume.

The firefighters thought the grass fire was out and had sent firemen away.  At this time we also had a storm front moving through and the winds were blowing 30-40mph.  Can you see where I am going with all this!  Pretty soon that fire had restarted itself and was fanned by those wind gusts and soon out of control!

These next photos are from local people, not me.  I stayed home, not like the many gawkers that were impeding the work of police and firemen.  The fire was just on the north side of town and soon they were asking people from a certain neighborhood to evacuate!  I personally know of 3 familes that had to leave their homes!  

Scary, right!  I am a friend of a lady whose 2 sons were battling this blaze and work with the wife of the city's fire chief!  So thankful they were able to get this under control, no homes were destroyed and no lives lost! And we did get some rain and unfortunately lots of lightening strikes.

So onto a new day.  Had Curtis up to the airport for 7am for a shuttle drive.  Got my walk in!  Maybe some srapping later.  Have my NZ photos almost complete and my Australia photos just arrived in the mail the other day!

Hopefully not so much excitement for today!