East Tennessee Wildfires

Do we have any Goodjers in east Tennessee? Everything OK where you are?

In case anyone else has missed it, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Dollywood are on fire. Mandatory evacuations are underway. 30 structures on fire in Galtinburg, including a 16 story hotel.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...

http://www.ajc.com/news/national/dol...

https://www.facebook.com/lucianoinve...

http://wate.com/2016/11/29/tema-30-s...

Did the rains that appeared to pass through overnight have any beneficial effect? From the articles it appears not, which is amazing since that front brought such heavy rains in locations to the West and South of there.

I'm so use to hearing about forest fires out West, it is so strange to see them East of the Mississippi R.

I read that a lot of the experienced fire fighters (ones that fight these types of fires country-wide) said that the last 24 hours were like nothing they had ever seen before. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for this.

Here is a reddit post that was updated with news throughout the night. It was difficult to read.

Edit: Also, it seems the aquarium is still ok and the current occupants are fine for 24 hours without their caretakers touching the equipment.

Holy crap, wind gusts over 80MPH overnight, no wonder it just exploded. Hoping everyone's OK.

I used to live in Northeast TN. Real shame what is going on. Such a beautiful place.

My best friend's family owns four rental cabins there. Well, owned. All four were destroyed.

We live in WNC and there have been numerous fires in the area for the past month. Luckily, not many structures have been threatened in NC, though the smoke has been almost fog thick on some days. The region is supposed to get more rain later this week but things have been unbelievably dry and many trees are full of dried out leaves. Not sure if this rain will change things but our local weather guy had previously said it might take an 8 inch snow to really dent the fires.

I was just there this year

The rain while not plentiful has helped a little, but the wind didn't help at all.

Everything there has been coming in fast and furious so it's been hard to tell what's true or not. All horrible, and apparently this was started by a political prank or gesture.

A list of what's been burned.

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/gatli...

Here's a link that shows all the active forest fires.

https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/v...

The storms that just came through North AL were pretty bad, including tornado warnings. Possible touchdowns. I just hope the rain comes before the wind tonight when it reaches that part of TN.

Rains just started there about 30 minutes ago.

Along with a tornado warning (seriously wtf)