UPDATE: 7:00pm, 8/27/2021
Here is infrared data from a 6:30pm flight showing the fire’s spread to the east. There has not been any new spread over the dozer lines in Station and Cody Creek, but the two fingers of the head of the fire have closed together to the south of Highway 50, and the finger on the north side of Highway 50 moved about a half mile east in past 22 hours.
View to the south over Strawberry. Yellow outline is 6:30pm location of fire’s edge. The red outline is from last night’s IR mapping at 8:00pm. Black lines are dozer lines.
EARLIER:
Good morning.
I update this page as I have new aerial heat mapping. There are some good resources for real-time intel on Twitter under the #CaldorFire hashtag. I don’t usually do running updates, but sometimes post updated maps or linkm to important information on Twitter.
Here is a map of divisions and branches on the fire, this is excerpted from today’s air ops map (8/27/2021).
The eastern head of the fire didn’t move much last night. There was approximately one mile of fire growth (about 400 acres) down Camp Creek, on the NW corner of the fire between Boles Gap, Eagle Canyon Road and Meadowlark Way. At 4:45am, the fire was about 1.5 miles east of Pleasant Valley.
Heat mapping data below is from 4:45am on August 27. White line shows overnight fire growth. Black lines are bulldozer firelines. There was no discernible growth on the 30 acre spot fire across bulldozer lines in Cody Creek, southwest of Strawberry. The fire spread a couple hundred yards upcanyon on the north side of the South Fork American River.
There was some spread on the west side of the 2019 Caples Burn at Sherman Canyon. As I mentioned in last night’s update, the 2019 Caples Fire was a prescribed burn that escaped control and eventually was called a wildfire. Overall, the entire area in blue got mainly beneficial fire effects (fuel reduction, thinning of small trees). The Caples burn scar is helping to corral the southeast side of this fire and is an excellent example of why we need to use fire on a much larger scale to reduce the likelihood of megafires like the Caldor. There is a lot of good reference material on Caples Fire here. For more reading on ways to support increased prescribed burning in California, check out https://firerestorationgroup.org/. Also, the Fire Restoration Group’s website has a great digital library of wildfire science and prescribed burning research documents.
The biggest story overnight is a run about one mile downcanyon in Camp Creek. Heat mapping data is from 4:45am. White line shows overnight fire growth. Black lines are bulldozer firelines. North is up in this image.
Looking northeast up Camp Creek.
Looking east over E-16, toward Sly Park.
The fire continues to back down into the South Fork American River/Highway 50 corridor between White Hall and Kyburz.
There was very minor spread to the north on the flank above Highway 50. This view looks west.
Forecasts
