The National Weather Service has issued Red Flag Warnings for some areas in Oregon, Idaho, and Montana for today.
For the area near the Reynolds Creek Fire in Glacier National Park the NWS predicts, between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. MT today, sustained winds of 15 to 20 mph with gusts of 20 to 30 mph. The humidity will drop to 10 to 18 percent.
During the same time frame, southeast Oregon and southwest Idaho will experience isolated thunderstorms with outflow winds up to 40 mph.
The map was current as of 12:18 p.m. MDT on Wednesday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts and maps. For the most current data visit this NWS site or this NWS site.
Undated NPS photo of the Reynolds Creek Fire, Glacier National Park.
The Reynolds Creek Fire in Glacier National Park in northwest Montana has been relatively quiet recently due to occasional rain. Heavy thundershowers on Monday kept helicopters on the ground for part of the day, but transported cargo when conditions permitted.
Firefighters are removing hazardous trees along Going-to-the-Sun Road which remains closed. Other areas closed include Logan Pass, the Rising Sun Motor Inn, and the Rising Sun Campground.
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(UPDATE at 11:45 a.m. MT, July 26, 2015)
A Skycrane helicopter drops on the Reynolds Fire. Undated photo from InciWeb.
For the last two days, firefighters, aided by the weather, have been able to minimize any additional growth of the Reynolds Creek Fire burning in Glacier National Park in northwest Montana.
On Saturday crews took advantage of cooler temperatures to build new fireline and reinforce other lines along the St. Mary River, and extinguished spot fires near the southwest edge of the fire. Firefighters began laying hose along firelines to assist with mopup from Rising Sun to the northeast end of the fire.
Fireline explosives will be used Sunday to build fireline in an avalanche chute containing heavy brush and downed logs. The sound of the blast will be audible in the town of St. Mary, and is expected in the early afternoon.
The explosive firefighters use is about 1¼ inches in diameter and 50 feet long; it looks like a long strand of sausage links. The rope-like material is filled with a gel-like PETN material that explodes at 22,000 feet per second after being ignited with one detonation cap. Since the material comes in 50-foot sections, it can be laid out as far as a crew wants to build fire line. It is stored on spools which allow it to be unrolled as firefighters walk over the desired location for the fireline.
The Incident Management Team, led by Incident Commander Greg Poncin, reports that the fire has burned 3,158 acres.
In addition to blowing things up, Sunday personnel on the fire will also continue direct attack supported by aircraft, and expect to be dropping snags and clearing debris near the Going-to-the-Sun Road.
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(UPDATE at 9:21 a.m. MT, July 25, 2015)
The Reynolds Creek Fire not long after it started on July 21, 2015. Photo by park volunteer Pam Smith.
The Reynolds Creek Fire in Glacier National Park has not spread a great deal over the last two days. More accurate mapping shows that it has burned about 3,100 acres. Examples of some of these more accurate maps are below. Click on them to see larger versions.
3-D map of the Reynolds Creek Fire, 10 p.m. July 24, 2015.
The Cabin Gulch Fire that started Tuesday morning 13 miles east of Townsend, Montana grew quickly toward the northeast during the day and at last count had burned approximately 2,500 acres.
On Tuesday the firefighting resources working the fire included 3 helicopters, 6 single engine air tankers (SEATs), 4 Interagency Hot Shot crews, 3 20-person hand crews, and multiple engines.
Highway 20 is closed in the Deep Creek Canyon area.
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(Originally published at 7:36 p.m. MT, July 21, 2015)
Heat detected on the Cabin Gulch Fire by a satellite at at 2:30 p.m. MT, July 21, 2015.
The Cabin Gulch Fire was reported in the late morning on Tuesday and has quickly grown into a large fire topped by an impressive convection column of smoke. The fire is 13 miles east of Townsend, Montana and has forced the closure of Highway 12 and the evacuation of 45 properties.
Helena National Forest spokeswoman Kathy Bushnell says the fire has burned about 400 acres and is spreading from grass and brush into timbered areas.
Westside Road Fire, July 21, 2015. Photo by British Columbia Wildfire Service.
The British Columbia Wildfire Service reported at 3:02 p.m. on Tuesday that the Westside Road fire northwest of Kelowna has grown to 430 hectares (1,062 acres).
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(Originally published at 12:06 p.m. PT, July 21, 2015; UPDATED at 1:28 p.m. PT, July 21, 2015)
Westside Road Fire, July 21, 2015, as seen form the Arrowleaf Cellars vineyard. Photo by Wicked Wine Tours.
The Westside Road Fire on the west side of Okanagan Lake northwest of Kelowna, B.C. has forced the evacuation of approximately 70 homes as of
The red and brown squares represent the location of the West Side Rd Fire at 12:45 p.m. July 21, 2015.
Tuesday at 8 a.m. The fire became more active on Monday, growing to 300 hectares (741 acres).
Overnight on Monday crews were able to prevent any loss of structures in the Shelter Cove area, in spite of downslope winds and aggressive fire behavior. Firefighters are working to protect power poles and extinguish spot fires in the subdivision.
The fire is currently burning at Rank 4 (highly vigorous surface fire, torching or passive crown fire).
Tuesday morning 23 firefighters were assigned to the fire. They expect to receive help later in the day from two helicopters, two 20-person crews, and water-scooping air tankers. (UPDATE from the BCWS at 1:16 p.m. on Tuesday: there are currently 19 firefighters and 4 air tankers on scene. There is no word about additional fire resources en route.)
In July of 2009 two fires broke out on the west side of Okanagan Lake that required the evacuation of 12,500 people. (Map of the location of the fires.)
Some areas in Washington, Oregon, and northern California are under Red Flag Warnings today.
The map was current as of 9:45 a.m. MDT on Tuesday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts and maps. For the most current data visit this NWS site or this NWS site.
Researchers at the Forest Service’s Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory study how a wildfire spreads, May 21, 2014. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
A new study about the physics of how a wildfire spreads has been completed by government employees, and thankfully it is freely available to taxpayers. A success for Open Access to the products of government-funded research!
The phrase “spreads like wildfire” is well-known but until recent discoveries through experiments conducted by scientists from the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, University of Maryland and the University of Kentucky, it wasn’t well-known how wildfires actually spread. Specifically, it was unclear how radiation and convection heat transfer processes, which both occur in wildfires, are organized to produce wildfire spread. Now, evidence presented in a new study, Role of buoyant flame dynamics in wildfire spread, reveals how flame dynamics that produce and transport convective heat effectively governs the spread of wildfire.
Previous studies focused mainly on radiant heat so little was known about the respective roles of convection and radiation on fire spread and most often the assumption was made that radiant heat was the governing factor. But scientists recently found that the net rates of heat transferred by radiation are insufficient because the fine fuel particles that constitute wildland vegetation cool efficiently by convection until contacted by flame.
As stated in the study, “if radiation itself is insufficient to account for fire spread…convection must provide the explanation.” So a team of scientists, led by Mark Finney of the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, began looking at flame dynamics.
Utilizing specialized burn chambers and wind tunnels at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab and the University of Maryland, scientists were able to assimilate and measure flame dynamics. They found this process can correctly scale up to those found in large-scale wildfires. They also conducted outdoor experiments and prescribed fires at Camp Swift, TX. The experiments led to the discovery of previously unrecognized flame behaviors and how those behaviors cause wildfires to spread. They also discovered that flame vorticity (circulations) and instabilities due to the buoyancy of flame gasses, cause wildfires to spread by forcing flames downward into the fuel bed and bursting forward ahead of the fire into fresh fuel (grass, brush, etc.).
“This study opens the door into the little known world of flame dynamics and gets us closer to understanding the complexities of radiative and convective heat and how they affect wildfire spread,” said Finney. The information obtained through this research is significant with the potential to:
Improve firefighter safety by providing better training to recognize and anticipate wildfire behavior
Simplify the physical principles of wildfire spread that can lead to the development of improved prediction models, and,
Improve the ability to mitigate fuel hazards by accurately modeling and describing fuel contribution to wildfires
The team of ten scientists who contributed to this study comes from the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Missoula Fire Sciences Lab – lead scientist Mark Finney, Ph.D., the University of Maryland’s Department of Fire Protection Engineering – lead scientist Michael Gollner, Ph.D., and the University of Kentucky’s Department of Mechanical Engineering – lead scientist Kozo Saito, Ph.D.
Six brief videos supporting the research are available, but you have to download them onto your device in order to view them.
