acres burned is only about half of what it was last year at this time. but experts warn as long as it stays this hot and this dry, the worst of fire season may be yet to come. clayton sandell, abc news, littleton, colorado. here is a look at your weather. sunny and dry in the fire zones out west. heat and humidity will return to the eastern third of the country. the ohio valley and eastern great lakes will see thunderstorms. some tornados and hail are also possible. 80s in southern california. a little cooler in the northwest. phoenix should top 100. chicago and detroit will be in the mid-80s. washington, d.c. in the mid-90s. well, when it comes to a uniquely american competition, one family, you might be able to say, is the spitting image of dynasty. brian krouse won the cherry spitting competition for the ninth time. his winning pit spit was 80 8 . his father rick came in second. brian s younger brother won the competition last year. in fact the krouse family claimed victory
guest was just describing. you have the first cavalry division. the medical brigade is assigned to headquarters. that s basically headquarters. what does that mean? where they go if they need medical care? absolutely. those are military occupational specialty. so they are not infantrymen or combat arms men and women in that type of a unit. so once again, you re talking about people that aren t trained to immediately react and take the right type of actions to combat something someone that is firing upon them. but when you re not armed, i mean, you re shooting ducks. you are certainly shooting ducks. so i think we have to start looking at what can we do to make sure we don t have our military base that is free fire zones. a lot of people are talking about letting them have their concealed fire weapons but you
achievement. you have to get the inspectors in to syria, in a civil war. you will have to negotiate, no fire zones with the government and with the rebels. and then you have got to secure all of these weapons which have been scattered in to dozens of different sites. you would like to bring them back in to several central locations and then decide whether you destroy them on site which is what we usually do with chemical weapons and what the u.s. and russia have been doing for two decades or do you want to move them out of the country? there was some talk of that in the announcement of the agreement. and all of this is going to take time and require international cooperation. the good news is that we have international organizations that have been set up to do exactly this kind of work and we can make use of them and then it s not a u.s. effort. we are not paying for it. we ll not firing any bullets. we are not spending any money. there won t be any u.s. boots on the ground. to tha
thanks, michaela. let s get straight to indra petersons, keeping track of the latest forecast on this friday. not too bad. you like the thunderstorms yesterday? i loved it. the thunderstorms are moving out of the area, good news for everyone else that doesn t like the rain. the cold front is making its way through the mid-atlantic and the southeast today. it s all clearing out, going to be gorgeous for the weekend, not only the northeast but improving conditions into the southeast where they saw so much rain. they re still going to get the scattered showers another day or so but the pattern is changing. this is the key. dome of high pressure building in, which means to everyone else drying out. much improvement in the southeast and also in the northeast, going to be gorgeous. look at these temperatures below normal, even 70s as we go through the entire weekend, friday, saturday and sunday looks good. i ll take it. send it my way. here s what it looks like on the west coast, a lot o
a chopper carrying water is on its way as nervous homeowners watch. this fire is just 100 feet from a very expensive home. the helicopter crew has to act with surgical precision. this is one of 51 wildfires burning across the west, from oregon, california to utah. for the first time in five years, authorities have raised the preparedness level to five. the highest on the scale. part of the reason there have been so many lightning strikes sparking fires, and forecasters say there are more to come. still, so far, this fire season is relatively tame. on average, by this date, nearly 6 million acres burn. this year it s just under 3.5 million. this time of year, authorities urge homeowners in fire zones to do everything they can to protect their property. it has to be terrifying. it is. because this thing can go up like a match box. very quickly. reporter: as firefighters attack the smoldering mountain