High Drama in Jackson

Our day was progressing as usual yesterday until about 3:30 PM. At that time, we heard some thunder and saw some lightening out the windows of the Visitor Center. There was no rain, but the lightening struck the side of the hill about 2 miles north of us, close to the Wildlife Museum that is a big attraction. It is also on the hill directly across the street from where our gate is located that we use to travel through from our space in the Elk Refuge.

I recorded as much as I could from the time the lightening struck and started the fire. This is the first one taken shortly after the strike:

It doesn't look too bad, does it?

Another as it begins to spread:

The winds picked up and the fire began to spread rapidly, endangering the Wildlife Art Museum. By the time we were off work at 5:30, it had spread almost across the entire hillside and caused hazardous conditions on the road as the smoke was creating problems for traffic. These shots are the view from our truck as we headed home:

The northbound traffic (our direction) was being turned around to head back to town. You can see in the center of the first photo above the small building where we need to go to get through our gate. As we approached the area where the traffic was being turned around, we spoke to a police officer and indicated that we needed to get to the gate as we live in the Elk Refuge. He agreed to allow us to proceed.

The scene was alarming as the fire, at this point, was nearly totally out of control and evacuations of nearby homes and businesses were taking place. We finally made it to our gate and went through, passing lots of firefighters and equipment. This was the view as we got to the point where we could stop:

As we drove closer to our RV, we took this shot of the fire which was then around 5:50 PM:

This next shot is one of the helicopters taking water from the lake that is just across from our RV:

Finally, it started to rain which helped the firefighters and this morning I found this shot on Facebook:

This shot clearly shows the area damaged by the fire, the Wildlife Art Museum below the burned area, the Area where our gate is located and the road (lower left) that we use to enter and exit the Elk Refuge where we are located. The fire actually burned over 80 acres of land and could have been a lot worse if the rain didn't start when it did. I would say that we dodged a bullet yesterday...