The Incident Management Team on the Douglas Fire 10 mile southwest of Sundance, Wyoming reported Thursday evening that the fire grew from 257 acres the day before to 1,400 acres. The evacuation orders have been lifted, but 50 residences are still threatened.
Map showing heat detected on the Douglas Fire by a satellite at 3:23 a.m. MDT June 2,4 2016.
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(UPDATED at 9:10 a.m. MDT June 23, 2016)
Pilot Ryan Cutter gets the Bell 206 ready for another day shift on the Douglas Fire, June 23, 2016. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
The Douglas Fire southwest of Sundance, Wyoming has burned approximately 700 to 800 acres, according to an early rough estimate from Incident Commander Dick Terry at 8:25 a.m. MDT on June 23. Mr. Terry had just finished a helicopter recon flight and said the biggest challenge today would be the “nasty winds”. They will have a more accurate size estimate after a GPS flight.
Douglas Fire, June 23, 2016. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Evacuations ordered yesterday are still in effect for the small number of people that had to leave their homes.
One structure has burned, described by Mr. Terry as not just an outbuilding but a “good shop”.
Approximately 120 personnel and one Wyoming state helicopter are assigned.
The Douglas Fire as seen from Sundance, Wyoming, 7 p.m. MDT June 22, 2016. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
I drove past this fire on I-90 Wednesday. It is the Douglas Fire 11 miles southwest of Sundance, Wyoming. It was reported at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday. It is listed at 300 acres, but was very active Wednesday afternoon.
Map showing heat detected by a satellite over the Douglas Fire at 1:45 p.m. MDT June 22, 2016.
The U.S. Forest Service announced that Todd Pechota, Forest Fire Management Officer (FMO) on the Black Hills National Forest, is the recipient of the 2015 National Forest FMO of the Year award. He received the honor during a recent ceremony at the U.S. Forest Service Regional Office in Colorado.
The Black Hills National forest is in the Black Hills of western South Dakota and northeast Wyoming.
Todd Pechota, in a screen grab from a video as he was interviewed about the Whaley prescribed fire north of Hill City, SD, January 13, 2016.
The award recognizes the most outstanding fire manager in the U.S. Forest Service each year. It has a long and prestigious history of honoring fire managers who have exhibited exceptional leadership in Forest Fire Management leadership as a Forest Fire Management Officer.
“Todd is an exceptional leader in wildland fire,” said Craig Bobzien, Black Hills National Forest Supervisor. “This award is a testament to the work he has accomplished. It underscores the relationships he has developed locally and across the nation, and the special care that he has shown for all those that have worked with him.”
In addition to his position as FMO on the Black Hills National Forest, Pechota serves as the Incident Commander for the Rocky Mountain Type 1 Incident Management Team and is past Chairman of the Great Plains Regional Dispatch Board of Directors.
The University of Wyoming has issued a publication about the patterns, influences, and effects of wildland fire in the state.
The University of Wyoming paper covers basic facts about fire, weather, intensity, severity, prescribed burning, as well as fire effects and interactions with soils, plants, livestock, wildlife, and bark beetle outbreaks. The document is 16 pages long with an additional 8 pages of references and a glossary. It was written by Derek Scasta, Assistant Professor and Extension Rangeland Specialist.
A couple of items attracted my attention. One is the graphic at the top of this article, the mean fire return interval for Wyoming. If you’re familiar with the geography of an area, data like this can absorb your interest for a while. The map appears to be a section taken out of the whole country map.
Another topic covered in the publication is the relationship between precipitation and acres burned.
The chart above from the paper uses the total Wyoming statewide annual precipitation compared with the total number of acres burned in wildfires each year. We have been thinking that the weather in the summer has a greater effect on acres burned than weather throughout the year. Those weather factors include temperature, relative humidity, wind, and precipitation, and a few others used by the National Fire Danger Rating System. It’s beyond our capacity to analyze all of those, unless we use an index that takes multiple parameters into account, such as the Burning Index or the Energy Release Component.
But what we did (immediately above) was to take one weather parameter from the summer and plotted it on a chart similar to the UofW chart– average monthly precipitation each year for June, July, and August. The weather data came from NOAA, and the acres burned was extracted from the University of Wyoming chart.
Included among the disclaimers is that average precipitation across the state does not apply to every square mile. Thunderstorms in the summer could be hammering one area, while a major fire is burning somewhere else. And, using only precipitation does not take into account temperature, relative humidity, and wind, which are all very important.
If anyone is interested in analyzing the Wyoming fire occurrence data using another weather factor or NFDRS Index (from the summer months), below are the numbers I used. Or, if you’d like to look at another state or geographic area, that would be fine. It’s important to analyze the acres burned and the weather observations for a large area in order get a sample of sufficient size to make it statistically significant. For example, use 15 to 20 years of information from a large national forest with multiple weather stations to reduce the data-skewing impact of a gully-washer thunderstorm at one location.
Weather forecast for the Pactola Lake area of the central Black Hills in South Dakota, created at 1:30 p.m. MST, February 6, 2016. Click to enlarge.
The National Weather Forecast has issued a High Wind Warning for the Black Hills in Wyoming and South Dakota for this weekend. From 11 p.m. CST Saturday until 8 p.m. CST on Sunday forecasters expect northwest winds of 25 to 35 mph with gusts up to 60.
Updated graphic forecast added at 8:20 a.m. MST, February 7, 2016.
In the Central Black Hills area near Pactola Lake, elevation 4,797, the temperature on Sunday will max out at about 33 degrees with a minimum humidity of 39 percent. The winds there on Sunday will be northwest from 28 to 38 mph with gusts from 40 to 53 mph.
At Rapid City, 3,600 feet, it will be warmer on Sunday — 37 degrees — with an RH of 37 percent and wind gusts up to 64 mph.
We can’t find a fire weather forecast, but have heard nothing about a Red Flag Warning.
Dave Porter of the Black Hills National Forest captured this image of a pyrocumulus cloud January 6 over a pile burning project southeast of Sundance, Wyoming.
A pyrocumulus cloud is produced by the intense heating of the air from the surface. The intense heat induces convection, which causes the air mass to rise to a point of stability, usually in the presence of moisture. Phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, forest fires, and occasionally industrial activities can induce formation of this cloud.
Alder Fire in Yellowstone National Park, August 19, 2015. NPS photo. (click to enlarge)
We happened to run across this photo of the Alder Fire in Yellowstone National Park when following up on a lead about how climate change may have influenced weather in 2014. After a few minutes of research we discovered that it was taken August 19, 2013 by fire personnel at Yellowstone National Park when they were monitoring the Alder Fire. It was burning at the same time two other fires were active in the park, the Alum and Druid Fires.
As we reported then, the Alder Fire was on a peninsula at the south end of Yellowstone Lake and eventually burned 4,240 acres. A lightning fire that was discovered on August 14, it was hemmed in by water on three sides and by a recently burned area to the south.
There are two reasons we are running the picture now — our Google research found that it has been used at least 228 times to illustrate various articles in the last two years; and, the picture is fascinating. The way the smoke is laying down on the lower-right side is very interesting, and a little mesmerizing, staying mostly below the tops of the trees. That smoke is apparently being sucked in to the area where the the intensity is greater and convection is developing, carrying the smoke vertically.
