As a prelude to our upcoming ‘Danger in Plain Sight’ Lookout video series about fire hazards in LA’s foothills, I critiqued an architecture video, shot in a very high fire hazard area of La Cañada Flintridge, NE of Downtown LA. Summary We discuss a luxury home in La Canada Flint Ridge, built by a husband/wife … Read more
Cover photo courtesy of Six Rivers National Forest. Lookout Livestream Overview Maps Summary There was fairly subdued activity over the past 24 hours, with mainly slow, backing progression towards the community of Forks of Salmon. The fire is currently most active in McNeal Creek. The fire is generally not spreading very readily within areas burned … Read more
Here is our morning intel assessment livestream of the current situation on the Butler Fire, burning around Forks of Salmon, on the Salmon River, in NW California. These maps are based on infrared flights conducted at 11pm, on 7/20/2025. Cover photo courtesy of U.S. Forest Service – Klamath National Forest Facebook. The maps are pretty … Read more
Sorry for the small maps, I’m traveling today, no laptop! Here are some infrared maps from last night at 9:41 PM, 7/19/2025. The fire did not spread aggressively down slope into Forks of Salmon as of the time of the mapping the fire was burning intensely on the upper slopes and had advanced significantly up … Read more
The firefighters continue to make good progress on the Green Fire north of Shasta Lake. They’ve now completed firing operations down the ridge between Rip Gut Creek and Fenders Ferry Road, and the firing operation is filling in back towards the main body of the fire. On the south flank of the fire, fire lines … Read more
After days of backing down toward the Salmon River from the south, the Butler Fire crossed the River on the afternoon of the 17th and ran up onto the north side of the canyon. Yesterday the fire continued to grow upcanyon on both sides of the River. It is well-established on the slopes above the … Read more
The Butler Fire jumped the Salmon River late yesterday afternoon and made a run. By 3am the slopover was 285 acres. Firefighting on the new front will be quite the puzzle, there’s a lot of line near the slop from the Jacket Fire, earlier this month, and a 2021 fire upstream on the North Fork … Read more
Introduction to Today’s Video Wildfire ‘severity’ describes the ecological effects of a fire. At a landscape-scale, severity is measured using satellite imagery. This process uses images of the vegetation from before and after the fire to create colored maps which show how much plant life is still alive after the fire. In this episode, we … Read more
Today’s Lookout Livestream We look at the potential for continued spread of the Green Fire, north of Shasta Lake, the Summit Fire, in the Marble Mountain Wilderness, near the town of Etna, California, and the Butler Fire, east of Somes Bar, on the Salmon River. Also, we take a first look at the Dragon Bavo … Read more
I was in a burn plan writing workshop at Chico State this week, and ran into retired US Forest Service leader, Patty Grantham. She is a Lookout fan, and said yes when I asked her to sit for an interview! We discussed her 41-year career. She detailed her tenure on the Klamath National Forest from … Read more
7/11/2025 – 4pm Intel Update – Green Fire. The fire has been much more active today than the past several days. Watch our livestream, below, and/or scroll down for maps and a quick update. From the 11:45am FIRIS flight, and webcams it looks like the pyrocumulus/column action has been on the south flank of the … Read more
The Green, Butler, and Summit Fires continue to spread in far-Northern California. We look at today’s events on each fire, and at the Neil Creek, Demming, and Elk Fires, in Southern Oregon. Today’s Livestream Situation Status Hot weather has settled in over much of NorCal, under a ridge of high atmospheric pressure. This is … Read more
Zeke Lunder provided a detailed update on the Green Fire, Butler Fire, and Summit Fire in Northern California and southwestern Oregon. The Green Fire, between Redding and Burney, showed significant progression with a slope reversal in late afternoon allowing the fire to run up toward the Low Pass area, in the head of Low Pass … Read more
The Butler Fire is spreading freely across the steep and rugged slopes of the Lower Salmon River Watershed, in Northwest California. My friend and colleague, Will Harling lives at the bottom of the mountain, and is watching the fire spread toward his neighborhood. Rather than packing up and running, he is setting up to conduct … Read more
Our 7/6/2025 NorCal Fire Report provided a detailed update on the Green Fire, Butler Fire, and Summit Fires in Northern California. This episode was sponsored by QTAC, WATERAX Pumps, and FyreBx. The Green Fire, located north of Redding, has grown from 96 acres on July 3 to 1,100 acres by July 6, doubling in size … Read more
The Green Fire has been burning for several days in a remote area northeast of Shasta Lake, and poses some special challenges for firefighters. This fire is going to burn for a while, and could reach over 10,000 acres in size. Here is a link to our livestream for this article. Read the material below … Read more
{AI summary, edited lightly by Zeke} Zeke Lunder provides a detailed update on the Madre Fire in Northern California, which has grown to over 72,000 acres. Using satellite imagery and infrared data, he maps the fire’s progress, noting minimal growth between 11 AM and noon. The fire is most active near Caliente Mountain and has … Read more
{Written by a robot, skimmed by Zeke} Zeke Lunder discussed the active wildfires in Northern California on July 4, 2025. Key fires included 2 small fires in Butte County, the Green Fire near Round Mountain/Shasta Lake, the Horse Fire between Lakehead and Trinity Lake, the Helena Fire west of Weaverville, and the Summit, Butler, and … Read more
7/3/2025 California Fire Report Zeke Lunder discussed the current fire situation in Northern California, highlighting several active fires. The Green Fire near Round Mountain is 100 acres, the Horse Fire near Lake Shasta is 220 acres, and the Helena Fire near the North Fork of the Trinity River is in difficult terrain. The Madre Fire … Read more
This post and video were inspired by a Facebook post from our local congressman, Doug LaMalfa, in regards to the Forest Service reforming the 2001 ‘Roadless Rule’, which placed large contiguous areas which were still unroaded in 1979 into a protected status which prevents future roadbuilding in these areas. My reply: Rep. LaMalfa claims “The … Read more
It is wildfire season in Northern California, yet? I get this question a lot. As of the third week in June, 2025, my answer is ‘not really’. How can I tell? Didn’t we just have Red Flag Warnings last week? Hasn’t the grass been dry for over a month? I need to qualify ‘fire season’. … Read more
On 4/18/2025, Terra Fuego Resource Foundation crews conducted a 60 acre prescribed burn for the Butte County Fire Safe Council on land owned and managed by the Paradise Unified School District. This project used fire to reduce forest undergrowth, pine needles, branches, and logs in an area that has been thinned, masticated, and chipped over … Read more
In March we took a spring break trip to the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, and the Santa Lucia Mountains east of Morro Bay. We looked at wildfire hazards in the tiny, cliff-dwelling of a town my wife grew up in, and returned to an area where I worked in 2001 to look at … Read more
I was invited to give a keynote address at Chico State’s ‘This Way To Resilience’ Symposium. My talk was titled ‘Telling Better Stories Around the Camp Fire’. It was about how the stories we choose to tell and amplify shape our relationship with the places they are about. Most of the stories we hear or … Read more
If you’ve followed our work, you’ve probably heard about my friend and colleague, Will Harling, who is a leader in bringing community-based prescribed fire back to the Klamath River after a century of fire exclusion and criminalization of native burning by local tribes. Locals on the River have been through a lot of fire, and … Read more
As the US Forest Service has lost internal capacity to get projects planned, awarded, and managed, it has become increasingly reliant on ‘partners’ – NGO agencies – to do a lot of the work Forest Service employees used to do. Until she was fired as a part of sweeping workforce reductions being carried out by … Read more
Summary In this video, we look at the geography of wild Chinook Salmon runs on Butte Creek, in the Northern Sacramento Valley region of California. We highlight the resilience of spring-run Chinook in returning year after year to Butte Creek from the Pacific Ocean, despite challenges like dams, levees and wildfires. We explain the migration … Read more
In a state as vast as California, there’s no single recipe for land management to reduce the risk of wildfires burning into neighborhoods. In Northern California, vegetation management in many cases involves thinning forests to reduce fuel loads and create fire breaks. In Southern California, the focus is often on managing brush around urban areas, … Read more
It’s wet in Northern California, and seems like a good time to talk about hydrology – the study of water movement on the earth’s surface. Here is tonight’s livestream, as summarized by a robot. Zeke Lunder, a geographer, discusses hydrology, focusing on the current storms in Northern California. He explains hydrology as the study … Read more
Following on our recent piece on California’s water management systems, here is a video we created two years ago in January during high flows on the Sacramento River and its tributaries. This discussion focused on Northern California’s water and flood management systems, emphasizing the complexities of managing floodwaters in the Sacramento Valley. We used mapping … Read more