So wildfire season is finally starting to take off in Northern California. Here is a thread on why it has taken this long, and what it takes for us to have large fires in California: California has so many fire suppression resources it is hard for fires to escape initial attack unless at least one … Read more
UPDATED 4/2/2023. I’ve been watching the floods progress on the satellite. LANDSAT orbits every 8 days, and Sentinel goes over every 5. These views are at the mercy of cloud cover, but you get the occasional peek at the big picture. Here is a progression of satellite images starting 3/13/2023. 3/13/LANDSAT Color Infrared – The … Read more
We’ve been pretty busy in past 6 weeks with interviews, burning, planning work, and some blacksmithing. Here are some of the projects we’ve been working on: An interview with Tim Chavez: I sat down with my friend, Cal Fire’s legendary Tim Chavez to talk about the science of wildfire prediction, and why it is so … Read more
We sat down recently with Wolfgang (Wolfy) Rougle to talk about prescribed fire, and efforts she is helping lead to increase local capacity for citizen-led prescribed burning in Butte County, Califorina. The Butte County Prescribed Burn Association has been running for several years, and has helped landowners to safely burn on private property around Forest … Read more
Mosquito Fire – September 15, 2022 Intro & Livestream: Zeke Lunder Maps & Intel: Ryan Cowper Stephens September 15 at 7am – Fire behavior was pretty subdued yesterday under smoke and mild winds. We took a trip out to the north end of the fire and connected with the Division Supervisor working on a strategy … Read more
California and Cedar Creek Wildfires – September 11, 2022 Mountain, Mosquito & Cedar Creek We edited our morning Lookout Livestream and added a section about how far the Mosquito Fire is from Truckee and Tahoe, and landscape conditions that might affect its spread. Also, the video has updated maps of new spread on the Mountain … Read more
Evening Update – Mosquito, Mountain & Cedar Creek Wildfires – September 10, 2022 This video gives an update on fire spread of the fires, above, and has an extended Q&A session with Zeke Lunder answering a wide range of questions on wildland firefighting topics including: Why don’t we fly air tankers in heavy smoke or … Read more
The Six Rivers Lightning Complex Fire continue to be affected by heavy smoke which is suppressing intense fire behavior.
The Six Rivers Lightning Complex Fire continue to be affected by heavy smoke which is suppressing intense fire behavior.
The Six Rivers Lightning Complex Fires continue to be affected by heavy smoke which is suppressing intense fire behavior.
Video briefing: Blog briefing: Per August 1, 2022 Facebook fire behavior briefing from Dennis Burns: Portions of the fire got rain last night. This, along with higher relative humidities and good cloud cover is helping moderate fire behavior, allowing crews to go direct in many places, including in the 2014 burn scar north of the … Read more
YouTube video above and post below have different material in them, but lots of overlap too. The McKinney Fire burned very actively through yesterday afternoon, growing about twenty thousand acres in 12 hours. In the afternoon, heavy smoke obscured the fire and thunderstorm outflows pushed smoke and fire in many directions. These following maps are … Read more
By Zeke Lunder The McKinney Fire burned very actively through the night, spreading across tens of thousands of acres. It was pushing up a big column by 10am this morning. These following maps are made with public aerial infrared mapping data from FIRIS (Funded by California OES). Having near real-time access to taxpayer-funded fire intelligence … Read more
By Zeke Lunder July 29, 2022 at 6pm Scroll for updates. The McKinney Fire on the Klamath National Forest is establishing on the south side of the Klamath River, east of Horse Creek. @FIRIS perimeter from about 5:20pm. Since mapping, fire has spotted over McKinney Creek Road. There is not a lot of large fire … Read more
OAK FIRE – July 28, 2022 By: Zeke Lunder *Lookout fire maps are high resolution. Click the maps to open them in a separate window, where you can zoom and scroll. This can be helpful for viewing our maps on cell phones* Action on the #OakFire has narrowed down to a couple very rugged miles … Read more
My friend Paul Price runs Paul Component Engineering — a world-class manufacturer of high-end bike parts, here in Chico, California. After the Dixie Fire, I did an interview for his newsletter and they asked some funny questions that let me run wild with a fantasy of how things could be different in our relationship with … Read more
We have been covering the Graham Fire for past two days and this video gives an overview of the challenges that arise wile managing wildfires in the almost one million acres of the “Lassen Foothills,” bordered by Red Bluff and Cohasset Ridge and the Sacramento Valley and Lassen Volcanic National Park. There … Read more
What does a metalwork have to do with wildfire? It takes a lot of welding and wrenching to run a mobile wildfire mapping operation, and I built up a pretty good shop during the years we started and ran Deer Creek Resources. When I sold DCR to Firestorm, in 2017, I kept the shop. The … Read more
I did an interview a couple months ago with Joanne Burgueño, a photographer who helps run the Dixie Fire Stories page on Facebook. They have been running multi-part interviews, with photos, with people who went thru the Dixie Fire in one way or another. Here it is: My name is Zeke Lunder. I’m a geographer … Read more
A Conversation with Eric Knapp and Yana Valachovic Eric Knapp, of the US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, and Yana Valachovic, from UC Cooperative Extension, came by The Lookout in November to talk with me about their new paper on home losses in the Camp Fire. Our talk is live on Amanda Monthei’s Life … Read more
Lassen Hotshots, 1977. Zeke: Okay. We have a visitor today, Sue Husari, legendary wildland firefighter, one of the first female Hotshots, and leader in American wildland fire with a fire career spanning 5 decades. Welcome to The Lookout, Sue! When did you know that you were going to have a career in fire? Sue Husari: … Read more
HR.5631 – The Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act is moving through committees in the House of Representatives. This is an extremely important piece of legislation for Federal wildland firefighters, who are actually not classified as being firefighters at all. Most of us who have worked for Federal agencies have been classified … Read more
In this video we talk with Danny Cluck about factors that influence the survival of conifer trees that have been damaged by wildfire. I first got to know Danny in the mid-’90s when we were both working for the U.S. Forest Service. I was on a tree-marking crew and he was a biologist who would … Read more
Here are images of the Alisal Fire based on an infrared overflight at 9:30pm on on October 13. The fire spread about 2.5 miles to the west since it was mapped 24 hours earlier on October 12. Yellow shows scattered heat, in areas that are generally cooling off. Orange/red fill shows areas which were burning … Read more
We are covering the Alisal Fire in Santa Barbara County. If this is your first visit to our site, please check out the About The Lookout page. This site provides wildfire intelligence and commentary. We are not affiliated with any organized fire department — this is unofficial information collated from public data sources. If you … Read more
Here is an updated virtual tour of the #FawnFire for September 26. This shows heat mapping from September 25 at 9:45pm. The fire was active yesterday on the north flank, backing down toward Shasta Lake. Southern parts of the fire did not spread.
Here is a guest photo essay from Darin McQuoid. He saw a post we did last week on the fires in the Southern Sierra where we mentioned tree mortality, so he sent us these great photos. We welcome submissions like this. Thanks, Darin! December 12, 2015: Tree mortality from bark beetle. Castle Rock and Paradise … Read more
