Was the Arnica fire the "perfect fire"?

The fire management officer of Yellowstone National Park was quoted by the Billings Gazette as calling the Arnica fire the “perfect fire from a number of perspectives”.

Here is an excerpt from their September 30 article:

As gusty winds boosted the Arnica fire to more than 9,000 acres over the weekend, Yellowstone National Park fire officials could only hope the weather forecast was correct – snow by Wednesday.

“The advantage there was it was burning into a weather change,” said Tom Nichols, director of the National Park Service’s fire management program.

Right on schedule, rain and then snow began falling on the 10,700-acre blaze Wednesday morning. Fire officials promptly demobilized the 230 people on hand to fight the fire and began removing sprinklers that had been set up to protect structures at Bridge Bay and Lake and Grant villages.

“It was a perfect fire from a number of perspectives,” said Joe Krish, fire management officer for Yellowstone National Park.

The lightning-caused blaze played its role in the fire-adapted Yellowstone ecosystem, a place where fires have long completed the life cycle of lodgepole pine, the dominant tree species. Fire suppression costs were kept to a minimum, since direct attack on the fire’s front was unnecessary because of where it was burning. Firefighter safety was high since fire crews were mainly tasked with structure protection, with only helicopter water drops aimed directly at the blaze. And before the fire got too unwieldy or threatened structures like the historic Lake Hotel, the weather cooled, dampened and largely doused the fire.

“Based on the weather projections, why spend a lot of money on air tankers if the weather is going to do the job for you?” Nichols said.

The fire also was doing park managers a favor by thinning out growth along the Central Plateau between Old Faithful and Yellowstone Lake.

“That hasn’t burned in quite a while, several hundred years,” Krish said. “It was ready to burn and a concern of ours.”

And because the fire burned near Grant and Lake villages, removing much of the larger fuels, the fire has created a “protective shield” from future fires coming from the west, Krish said.

Judging from the live web cam at Old Faithful, the six inches of snow that the Weather Service predicted has not materialized, but they did get some rain.

Congratulations to Joe Krish, Andy Mitchell, and the rest of the fire management staff at Yellowstone for pulling off a 10,700 acre naturally-ignited fire that was detected on September 23, was untouched by air tankers, and was stopped by a rain and snow event 7 days later that will probably end their fire season.

But I thought only air tankers could put out a fire!?!