News and opinion about wildland fire
Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches for enhanced wildfire danger have been issued by the National Weather Service for areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.
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The Red Flag Warning map above was current as of 9:38 a.m. MDT on Friday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts. For the most current data, visit this NWS site.
Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches for enhanced wildfire danger have been issued by the National Weather Service for areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.
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The Red Flag Warning map above was current as of 9:08 a.m. MDT on Thursday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts. For the most current data, visit this NWS site.
You may be familiar with pyrocumulus (pyroCb) clouds that form over intensely burning vegetation fires. They can be a combination of smoke and condensation. Some firefighters call this “ice capping”.
Chuck Bushey, a Fire Behavior Analyst and former President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, is a member of a small group studying pyroCb led by Mike Fromm of the US Naval Observatory.
Chuck sent me a link to an animation of pyroCb forming over the Silver Fire recently in southern New Mexico, and explained:
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“…this is one recent example of the sort of products our small global pryoCb group watch. The group also examines lots of particulate and atmospheric information (some from ground based instrumentation such as Lidar, as well as from other satellite channels) to make sure it’s a real fire event or something else. There are other events that may look similar from orbit and some of the more remote incidents that this group sees we may be the first observers.
We can sometimes track these major upper atmospheric (stratospheric) events multiple times around the globe mixing with other weather systems. The most global round-trips I have observed has been four in the northern hemisphere.
We can only speculate on what the input of the volatile elemental and organic chemicals and other pyrolyized materials (such as soil and ash) are having on the cold, upper atmosphere and our climate. We also guess that these events may be more frequent now and maybe more intense than in the recent past but we really don’t know because no one was watching and our capabilities were limited.”
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized3 Comments on Huge smoke plume attacks thunderstorm cell 
Originally published at 10:09 p.m. MDT, JUne 19, 2013
The photo above got my attention. It was posted on Twitter and Instagram by Chris Bronson, aka @cgb777.
My view from the plane of the Colorado wildfires. #colorado #wildfire http://t.co/yAHwRkZMP4
— Chris Bronson (@cgb777) June 20, 2013
It’s a very impressive smoke plume. Since he said it was in Colorado I guessed that it was the West Fork Complex in south-central Colorado 14 miles north of Pagosa Springs, which was listed on InciWeb (when it was working – don’t get me started) at 8,000+ acres. So I fired up Google Earth and confirmed that the geography matched. Then I visited the NASA site for viewing GOES images and found the series of photos below that show primarily the southeast corner of Colorado, and also portions of NM, OK, TX, and KS.
After this last image at 0200 UTC (8 p.m. MDT) the later images are too dark to see anything.
Chuck Bushey sent me this link to an animated GOES 13 Rapid Scan Operations visible and 3.9 µm shortwave Infrared images for the same two fires and the same period of time. With the IR in the lower frame you can easily tell when the second, more southern, fire gets going.
I thought it was interesting how the smoke plume in the four photographs above moved into space occupied by the large thunderstorm cell and appeared to force it to partially or mostly dissipate. Meteorologists out there can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking that there were at least two or three factors that caused it to happen.
It was also interesting how the scattered cumulus clouds on the Colorado/New Mexico state line in the span of 45 minutes formed into a large cumulonimbus cloud, which then seemed to merge or grow into the other one farther north near the smoke plume.
And then to make the photos even more interesting, a new smoke plume popped up in the last two photos between the West Fork Complex and the thunderstorms in the southeast corner of Colorado. As this is written at 10 p.m. Wednesday, this newer plume and fire does not show up on the Rocky Mountain Coordination Center map of current fires.
One of the Predictive Services offices has issued another Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisory. The last one, issued June 10, was for California. This new one, dated June 16, is for portions of Arizona and New Mexico.
The advisory does not mention the “Southwest Monsoon,” an event that typically starts in early July and generally begins to draw the curtain on the fire season in Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas, southern Utah and southwestern Colorado.
Below is the full text of the advisory.
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“Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisory
Arizona and New Mexico
June 16, 2013
Subject: Persistent multi-year drought across much of New Mexico and Arizona has dropped fuel moistures to critically low levels in the large dead and live foliar fuels. These critically low fuel moistures increase available fuel loading which contributes to and supports active crown fire in timber fuels when critical fire weather is present.
Discussion: The multi-year drought has reduced the fine fuel loading across most of the region so the focus for this advisory will be the timber fuels within the region.
Difference from normal conditions: Drought creates more available fuel in timber fuel types which will increase fire intensities, crown fire potential and difficulty of control for fire suppression resources. Short duration rain events provide only short term fuel moisture improvement in timber litter fuels (1, 10, and 100 hour dead fuels). Fuels rebound quickly to previous dryness levels. Short duration rain events provide no fuel moisture recovery in large dead and live foliar fuels.
Concerns to Firefighters and the Public:
Mitigation Measures:
Area of Concern: Please reference the map posted on the National Fuel Advisory Page.
http://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/fuels_fire-danger/fuels_fire-danger.htm
The timber fuels within this area of concern are the target for this fire behavior advisory.”
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(End of text)
Thanks go out to Ken
Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches for enhanced wildfire danger have been issued by the National Weather Service for areas in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Arizona.
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The Red Flag Warning map above was current as of 8:45 a.m. MT on Tuesday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts. For the most current data, visit this NWS site.
