FIRE
x992
Late in the afternoon of July z6， I989， a dry lightning storm swept
through the mountains north of Boise， Idaho， and lit what seemed like
tile whole world on fire.
A dry lightning storm is a storm where the rain never reaches the
ground. It evaporates in midair， trailing down from swollen cumulus
clouds in long， graceful strands called virga. The dectrical charges
from a dry storm do nor uail offbefi3re they hit the ground， however;
they rip into the mountains like artillery. On July 26， r989， lightning
was hitting the upper rkiges of the Boise National Forest at the rate of
a hundred strikes an hour. Automatic lightning detectors at the Boise
Interagency Fire Center were registering， all over the western states，
rates up around two thousand an hour. By nightf:all i2o fires had
caught and held north of Boise， little one-acrc blazes that eventually
converged into a single unstoppable， unapproachable front known as
the l，owman fire.
For dre first three days Lowman was simply one among hundreds
of fires that were cooking slowly through the parched Idaho forests.
Around four o clock in the afternoon ofJuty zg， however， the flames
reached some dead timber in a place called Steep (. reek， just east of the
town of Lowman， and the fire changed radically. [he timber was fiom
a blowdown two years earlier and was so dry that when the flames
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