Wildfires rage on; new one pops up in North Georgia

Grace Mynatt stands atop Signal Mountain and looks off toward Lookout Mountain as smoke from wildfires collected in Chattanooga Valley last week. Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press Grace Mynatt stands atop Signal Mountain and looks off toward Lookout Mountain as smoke from wildfires collected in Chattanooga Valley last week. Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press

By Steve Johnson November 18, 2016 7 min read

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Wildfires continue with no rain imminent

Two major fires burn at the Flipper Bend forest fire atop Walden Ridge in this view to the southwest from Montlake. The lights on the horizon, at left, is the Northgate Mall portion of Hixson. Crews from Tennessee State Parks, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture Forestry Division and U.S. Forestry Service personnel from the Bureau of Land Management were on scene as two Air National Guard BlackHawk helicopters sporadically dumped water on the expanding blaze.

A southbound pickup is dwarfed by the white smoke from the Flipper Bend fire late Tuesday in view of U.S. Highway 27, in Soddy-Daisy.

Volunteer firefighter's with the Sequoyah Volunteer Fire Department depart to work the Mowbray Mountain fire on Thursday in Soddy-Daisy.

Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 11/9/16. A aircraft from the US Forestry Service drops fire retardant on a wildfire burning along the Flipper Bend area of Signal Mountain on November 9, 2016. According to a Hamilton County Government release this morning over 780 acres have burned on Flipper Bend and another 230 plus acres on nearby Mowbray Mountain.

Wildfires ravage Southeast

Finally!

After 28 days in a row without rainfall, there is a slight chance of precipitation in the weekend forecast. But WRCB-TV meteorologist Paul Barys says don’t get your hopes up – while there is a 20 percent chance of water falling from the sky Saturday, the total amount will be less than one-tenth of an inch, nowhere near the solid inch fire officials say they need to quench the half-dozen wildfires in the area.

For more we will need to wait until at least next Wednesday, and even then, the maximum we can expect will be about a quarter of an inch, Barys said.

“It’s gonna help a little bit – it will give hope to human beings that it can rain,” Barys said. “A lot of people think it will never rain again.”

Thursday was the 28th day in a row with no rainfall at Lovell Field, the official measuring place for record-keeping purposes. That is the seventh-longest drought in the city’s history, Barys said. The record is 39 days, set in 1935.