McKinney Fire/Klamath River fish kill

[PV_Premier]

Couple articles about a pretty good fish kill from debris flows coming out of the McKinney Fire burn scar. Not a lot of real data out there but they are speculating that the damage is restricted to the region between the downstream end of the burn scar and Happy Camp.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/us/mckinney-fire-fish-california-oregon.html

https://www.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2022/08/08/karuk-tribe-mckinney-fire-slide-caused-kill-zone-in-klamath-river-suffocating-thousands-of-fish

Not terribly surprising but still pretty depressing, lots of dead steelhead smolt in those pictures.

[hwchubb]

I saw something that listed Humbug Creek and McKinney Creek as the source - hopefully they meant Little Humbug, which comes in at Klamath River, because Humbug Creek comes in up by Tree of Heaven Campground. Either way, a ton of great water between Klamath River and Happy Camp. I saw a lot of suckers (had not realized there were that many!) in the pics I saw, no doubt lots of salmon and steelhead smolt (and bugs, and baitfish, etc) as well.

[Terry Thomas]

The plume of brown water from the storms has reached Blue Creek and extends down river. Hopefully, it will continue on out of the system in a couple days.

[TahoeJoe]

My son went up to the Salmon River last weekend to go swimming. He reported that the river was running brown, like chocolate milk in color and texture. They left and went to Willow Creek and saw a few smoke plumes on the way there.

The mud flow on the Salmon probably contributed to the turbidity down at Blue Creek.

[Lew Riffle]

Zeke Lunder of the Lookout has been doing a remarkable job reporting fires this past year. Check this video out and around 24 minutes he covers the fish kill at Humbug and Mckinney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pV2RQ0rufk

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Watch the great YouTube channel above.

"The Lookout"....on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pV2RQ0rufk

Thanks Lew.....good stuff.