Skywatch Friday - September 11, 2026

With today being September 11th, I wanted to take a brief moment to reflect before jumping into today's regular post.

"Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America."  

Then President George W. Bush

 “Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.”  

Former President Barack Obama

We need to bring back that unity.

Skywatch Friday

Heading south with a view of the Siskiyou Mountains.  The sharp one in the center is Wagner Butte.  It's not the tallest in the range, that's Mount Ashland, but from this angle it looks like it.  Wagner Butte is geographically at the intersection where the Western Cascades meet the Siskiyous.  It forms a "wall" on the southwest side of the Rogue Valley floor.  On the right is a Boise Cascade EWP (engineered wood products) mill.  The lights on the poles to the right are high-output industrial floodlights so the mill can work at night.  The structure to the left is an Oregon Department of Transportation camera for live road and weather conditions that are sent to TripCheck.  It also monitors air quality since it's near a heavy industry zone.  Important, but they sure detract from the view! 

Log decks, or storage stacks, of  raw, unprocessed logs.  Also, my son's arms!  The phone is mine, the case was a lucky find.  The dog has an eye patch like Mickey's!  It says, "Life is Better With a Dog."

The large elevated enclosures are storage hoppers, or chip bins.  They store byproducts like sawdust and shavings.   The top funnel is a cyclone separator which uses centrifugal force to separate airborne dust and wood particles out of the pneumatic air system, dropping them in the storage bins.  Trucks can drive directly under the bins to load the residual products for delivery to mills or biomass facilities.  Some days there are huge piles of sawdust, which smell great!

Have a nice weekend.  After cool weather and rain we are back into the upper 80s and 90s for a few days.