Real-time Fire and Air Quality by text, inReach, etc.

[Rex Sanders]

Just found trailinfo.org

Text your U.S. latitude and longitude to (765) 55-FIRES (+1-765-553-4737), and get the nearest Air Quality Index reading, plus wildfires within 50 miles. In the example above, I used an iPhone to text the lat/lon for Bishop, CA and show the still-active Airport Fire nearby. Designed to work from an inReach and other satellite communicators.

Send your current location (easy from inReach), get local information. Worried about a far trailhead, pass, or other location? Take those lat/lon coordinates with you and check from time-to-time during your trip.

Should be very useful during our new era of wildland fires and smoke.

— Rex

[John S.]

from faqs…

“This doesn’t seem to work with the inReach “Send Reference Point” feature.

Yes, I discovered this issue when testing the app. The “Send Reference Point” function of the inReach does not currently let the recipient successfully reply back to the sender. You can test this by sending a message to your own phone and trying to reply. I opened a support ticket with Garmin on this, but more tickets might get a faster resolution, so feel free to do the same.”

 

[Rex Sanders]

Sending a Preset or Text message from an inReach device usually includes your current position, and should work fine with TrailInfo.org.

From the inReach SE and Explorer manuals:

Sending a Reference Point
You can send a message that includes a reference point with details about another location. This feature is helpful if you want to meet someone at that location.

Sending a Reference Point not found in the Mini / Mini 2 manuals.

If you want to know about another location, you’ll need the latitude and longitude in decimal degrees. Two decimal places, roughly 1 mile (1.6 km) maximum inaccuracy, should be close enough for these purposes.

You can click locations and get lat/lon with too many decimal places from google.com/maps, which is what I did for Bishop. Or figure it out the old fashioned way from genuine USGS paper topo maps. There’s probably a bunch of other ways.

— Rex

[Arthur]

edit: already answered

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