Here is information on the Fawn Fire, burning northeast of Redding.
General Fire Location
The fire slowed down significantly this afternoon under a heavy aerial attack that had at least 12 tankers working at the peak of the firefight. Here is an update from NorthOps — the regional fire coordination center at the Redding Airport.
CA-SHU Fawn Fire: 5500 acres timber, 5% contained. Extreme fire behavior observed with wind driven runs and spotting. Structures are threatened with Evacuation Orders and Warnings in effect. Threats to High voltage transmission lines and the Mountain Gate Quarry. Road, area and trail closures in effect. Fire is located in a remote area with difficult access. Cal Fire IMT 4 (Pemberton) is on order with a planned command transition at 1200 tomorrow.
Analysis:
Many of the areas on the southeast side of the fire did not spread much after about 3pm today, when strong north winds let up a bit and turned to be more from the east. This blew the fire toward I-5, but this side of the fire was sheltered from the east winds, and downhill spread was slower. The north end of the fire is backing toward Lake Shasta. Generally, air tankers had very good access to the flanks (east and west sides) of the fire throughout the day. At the peak of the fire’s southward spread, it was too smokey for air tankers to be effective right in front of the fire, and also, the fire was casting spots out in front of it that spread fire over any retardant lines they got in under the smoke.
Here is a fire weather forecast for the Fawn Fire area. The humidity is forecast to come up a little overnight, but it will stay fairly warm. Overall, fire weather conditions overnight are not at critical levels. Tomorrow will be hot and dry, but winds are not forecast to be extreme. A lot of progress was made in the firefight today. Still this fire grew almost 6,000 acres today, which means a lot of open fireline. While air support slowed the fire down significantly, there is still a lot of work to do to secure the edge of the fire.
We were fortunate today there were not a lot of other fires taking off in Northern California. This allowed the Fawn Fire to have almost all of the available air support. If there had been competition for aircraft, the outcome could have been a lot different today.
Weather Forecast:
Central Shasta Trinity NF – Lake Shasta Area – North Valley Foothills
208 PM PDT Thu Sep 23 2021
TONIGHT...
Sky/Weather.....................Mostly clear.
Min Temperature.................61-68 lower elevations...except 52-62
higher elevations.
24 hr Trend................4 degrees warmer.
Max Humidity....................34-49 percent.
24 hr Trend................9 percent down.
20-Foot Winds..........
Valleys/Lwr Slopes...North winds 8 to 14 mph.
Ridges/Upr Slopes....North winds 11 to 17 mph.
LAL....................1.
CWR....................0 percent.
FRIDAY...
Sky/Weather.....................Mostly sunny.
Max Temperature.................92-97 lower elevations...except 83-92
higher elevations.
24 hr Trend................Little change.
Min Humidity....................8-13 percent.
24 hr Trend................Little change.
20-Foot Winds..........
Valleys/Lwr Slopes...North winds 8 to 14 mph shifting to the
southwest up to 8 mph in the afternoon.
Ridges/Upr Slopes....Northeast winds 10 to 16 mph shifting to the
southwest 5 to 11 mph in the afternoon.
LAL....................1.
CWR....................0 percent.
We will have updated maps in the morning if the fire gets an overnight mapping flight.
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Mapping from September 23 at 6pm. Data from FIRIS mapping program. There is a compass in upper-right of each image.
The image below shows the spread of the fire between noon and 4pm on September 23. Red outline is 4pm, yellow line is 1pm, white line was noon.
