Susanville, Big Cliff, Dragon, and Monroe – 7/31/2025

A busy day here at The Lookout, and across the west! We started the day looking at intel for the Dragon Bravo and Monroe Canyon Fires, but quickly got swept up with the developing Big Cliff Fire, on the Klamath National Forest, and finished the afternoon watching the rapidly-unfolding 1-4 Fire, in Susanville.

We cover these all in tonight’s Lookout Livestream. The broadcast is summarized, below, after more detailed intel and context for the 1/4 (Susanville) and Big Cliff fires.

Lookout Livestream

Zeke Lunder provided updates on two new fires in California: the 1-4 (Susanville) Fire, which started at about 16:30 and was expected to be contained tonight, and the Big Cliff Fire in the Klamath NF, which is a lightning strike and was 24 acres this morning. The Big Cliff Fire is burning in a steep, 10-year-old burn scar, making firefighting difficult due to standing dead trees. The Susanville fire, driven by outflow winds, threatened a mobile home park but was contained with significant aircraft support. Lunder also discussed the Dragon Bravo fire in Utah, which is being managed with firing operations, and the Monroe Canyon fire in Arizona, which is expected to continue to burn extensively due to its location and fuel conditions.

The 1-4 Fire in Susanville

The fire took off at about 16:30, and had a hard 180 degree wind shift as outflow winds from the north arrived. The fire threatened a mobile home park and tribal housing at the Susanville Rancheria. Heavy air attack and ground attack had a line around the fire by 22:00.

1-4 Fire – Final Perimeter. 260 acres.
1-4 Fire – Final Perimeter. 260 acres.

Susanville Fire Dynamics

  • The Susanville fire started off small but quickly moved with a thunderstorm outflow wind.
  • The fire pushed towards the mobile home park near the Rancheria and the north edge of Susanville.
  • Aircraft availability was high, and they were able to thoroughly paint the fire before sunset, preventing it from burning into Susanville or up the mountain.
  • The fire’s behavior is influenced by the desert environment, with winds changing direction quickly.

Weather in Susanville during the fire:

Weather in Susanville during fire

Big Cliff Fire is Likely to Grow Large and That is Not All Bad.

  • The Big Cliff Fire is on a steep slope, making mapped acreage inacurate.
  • The fire is burning inside the “Whites Fire” from 2014, portions of which were a high-severity fire.
  • The landscape is steep and has 10-year-old burnt forest with dead and down wood, making firefighting difficult.
  • Firefighters face dangerous conditions due to standing dead rotten trees, known as burning snag patches.
  • The fire is burning in a recent burn scar, cleaning up dead and down material.
  • The fire is expected to burn for a while, but will likely be beneficial for the majority of the burned landscape it reburns.
  • The fire’s behavior is influenced by the previous fire’s severity and the management history of the area.
  • The ability of land manager to use fire to restore the previously-burned landscape is constrained by economic pressures including nearby ‘forest carbon offset investments’ on neighboring private timberlands, and the need for local residents to breathe clean air.

Let’s start off our Big Cliff Fire coverage by looking at the preliminary fire effects mapping of the Butler Fire, which just burned about 15 miles west of the Big Cliff Fire between July 1 and July 20th of this year. Like the Big Cliff Fire, which is burning in the 2014 Whites Fire scar, the Butler Fire reburned an area which burned in the human-caused 2013 Butler Fire. Satellite imagery captured on 7/30/2025 of the Butler Fire shows that the fire burned with a mixed severity, as is typical of fires reburning recently-burned areas in the Klamath Mountains.

Judging from satellite imagery, it appears that many of the larger trees which survived the 2013 Butler Fire, survived this one, as well. Like the Big Cliff Fire, the Butler also had large volumes of dead and down material in place. The Butler Fire appears to have burned with high severity mainly in areas which had burned severely in 2013, which were covered mainly in shrub.

The current energy release component ratings (general forest flammability) are lower now than they were 2 weeks ago, when the Butler Fire was burning (see chart, below).

Here are 7/30/2025 satellite images of the Butler Fire. Green areas still have green foliage on them, and red areas generally do not. I have been interpreting these types of images for the past 2 decades, and find that while they often underestimate some of the tree mortality, they are generally pretty good at showing large-scale trends. We have had commercial projects mapping wildfire severity for major industrial timber company, and have done extensive field work to calibrate our eyeballs with this stuff.

Butler Fire Severity
Butler Fire Severity
Butler Fire Severity

The Big Cliff Fire started from lightning in the past couple days, and started huffing and puffing last night. It was mapped at 24 acres this morning, and was putting up a decent smoke column for most of the day, visible on the Fort Jones and Hayfork Bally webcams. The fire is burning in the 2014 Whites Fire burn (green in map, below), just west of the Russian Wilderness in an area with extremely heavy dead and down fuel loading of logs and branches from the 11 year-old fire. The blue area to the south (top of map) burned in the 2021 River Complex Fires.

Purple areas to the east are private timberlands managed by Ecotrust Forest Management. Yellow areas are managed by New Forests. Some of the EFM lands are in carbon offset holdings.
Green outline is Russian Wilderness.

As of about 9pm, the fire had grown to about 260 acres. It is well-established in teh extremely steep Russian Creek watershed, and will be very difficult or impossible to contain now with direct attack. If there is not much competition for crews and aircraft in the next week, the Forest Service may soak the headwaters of a river system whose namesake salmon are on the brink of extinction with aquatically-toxic retardant, with the goal of slowing the fire enough to allow a bunch of hotshot crews to cut 10,000 cords of firewood thru the heavy dead and sketchy snag patches to secure a fireline. This is a long shot, though. We are entering peak fire season, few structures are currently (or will ever be) threatened by this fire, and just about anywhere else in the country will be a higher priority for the elite crews and aircraft.

Looking at the opportunities presented by the terrain, If the fire does get an indirect attack strategy, we estimate the fire will burn across at least 15,000 acres, and possibly up to 25,000 acres, with the majority of the timbered areas getting low-moderate severity. The shrub areas will generally experience higher-severity fire. This is a very similar setup to the nearby 2025 Butler Fire, which burned in almost identical terrain in a similar-aged burn scar. As mentioned, above, the Butler Fire appears to have achieved a lot of resource benefits in the 2 weeks that it was burning, earlier this month.

Big Cliff Fire at 9pm, 7/31/2025
The green area is the 2014 Whites Fire. The box created by the 2014 Whites Fire and Salmon River Road is about 25,000 acres. Fires are often contained on the same ridge systems, year after year, as these are the place with the best (or only) access to build firelines.
Heavy fuel loading in the area of the Big Cliff Fire

Since the fire has initially established on the upper slope of the drainage, much of the initial burning will be with backing fire behavior, which is generally lower-severity. This may allow many of the larger trees to survive this fire. Places where the fire make headfire runs will have higher severity. However, many of the slopes exposed to headfire runs already burned hot in the 2014 Whites Fire.

The graphic below is a simplified projection of areas which may get backing (blue) vs headfire (orange) fire. Black is a potential control line location.

Potential Spread of Fire.

Forecasts

Weather conditions are fairly mild in NW California, at the moment, with forecasts for below-average seasonal temps and fuel moistures, and good humidity recoveries at night.

Forecast for coming week, at Big Cliff Fire.

Generally, fuel flammability is below seasonal averages in Northern California right now, trending closer to the most extreme conditions recorded in early June of mid-October, over the past 22 years. These conditions are often conducive to beneficial fire effects, and are closer to common prescribed fire prescriptions than critical wildfire concerns.

Current Fuel Moisture Conditions (Source: NorthOps)

In our Livestream, Zeke briefly mentioned the 2021 River Fire and its high-severity fire effects in Coffee Creek, to the south of the Big Cliff Fire. This came up while discussing the complexity of fire management in the Klamath. He noted that some locals told him an entire huge area was completely devastated in 2021, potentially due to firing operations. This was part of a broader discussion about the challenges of managing backcountry fires, where every location has conflicting narratives about whether fires should be suppressed or allowed to burn naturally. Zeke emphasized that the goal is to develop a common language for understanding fire’s role in the landscape, recognizing that fire is inevitable in these ecosystems.

Dragon Bravo Fire Update

  • Dragon Bravo fire is being managed with firing operations to control the fire’s spread.
  • The fire is burning in subalpine fir and lodgepole pine, which are highly volatile due to their evolution to be unpalatable to browsing animals.
  • The fire has run an extra three miles from the night before, with new firing operations to tie the flank of the fire.
  • The fire is expected to continue burning due to the volatile fuels and the burn scar’s fine fuels, and may reach the 2025 White Sage Fire, about 12 miles to the north.

Monroe Canyon Fire Overview

  • The Monroe Canyon fire is active on the south, north and northeast flanks, with significant growth overnight.
  • The fire is expected to burn most of the timber in the mountain range it is located in, and down to the sagebrush.
  • The fire’s behavior is influenced by the southerly winds and the terrain.
  • The fire still has potential for significant growth.