Our most destructive fires often occur in places most people don’t think of as being ‘wildlands’, but people from Paradise, Santa Rosa, Boulder County, and Lahaina have learned the hard way, living in an urban environment doesn’t mean your place isn’t at risk of burning down. This video talks about the difference between wildfires and … Read more
This article was written as the million-acre Dixie Fire neared its conclusion, in September 2021. Many bad things happened during the two months of action during this firefight, and much of the fire’s growth was affected by fire put on the ground during firefighting. Firing operations are one of the main tools firefighters have at … Read more
When fires burn with primarily ecologically beneficial effects in wilderness areas, fire managers face difficult questions: when do we let these fires burn, and when do we send in resources to try to stop them? The Hancock Fire in northwest California offers a lens through which we can explore this puzzle. The fire ignited in … Read more
Over the past 3 weeks, lightning has ignited many fires in NW California and Western Oregon and several have become large. Rain knocked most of these fires down over the first few days of September, but even before then, the majority of the fire effects on these fires were low-moderate severity and ecologically beneficial. We’ll … Read more
Over the past 3 weeks, lightning has ignited many fires in NW California and Western Oregon and several have become large. Rain knocked most of these fires down over the first few days of September, and also prevented mapping using aerial infrared. New mapping was available on the morning of 9/4, and this video looks … Read more
Over the past 3 weeks, lightning ignited many fires in NW California and Western Oregon and several have become large. This video uses satellite imagery from 8/31/2023 to evaluate how hot the fires burned in different areas. We discuss factors affecting differences in fire severity and what burn patterns can tell us about past land … Read more
Today’s Livestream aired at 8 am. Today’s Lookout livestream provides an overview of the largest fires burning in Northern California and Oregon. We talk about how the North winds have influenced fire behavior, look at firing operations, and learn how the fires have behaved over the past 24 hours. Zeke takes a look at the … Read more
Predicting Wildfire Spread Predicting wildfire spread is a difficult task, and current approaches often fall short in reliably describing fire behavior during severe conditions. We covered our experimental use of the Pyrecast fire spread forecasting models in depth with this article on 8/27. Since we ran the model 2 days ago, the large-scale weather forecast … Read more
Today’s Livestream aired at 8am. Lightning has ignited many fires in Western Oregon and several have become large. This video provides an overview of the largest fires, the Tyee Ridge Complex, the Chilcoot Fire east of Roseburg and Glide, the Lookout Fire, near MacKenzie Bridge, and the Camp Creek Fire, in Portland’s water supply, the … Read more
Today’s Livestream aired at 7am. Lightning has ignited many fires in Western Oregon and several have become large. This video provides an overview of the largest fires, in the Tyee Ridge Complex, the Chilcoot Fire east of Roseburg and Glide, the Lookout Fire, near MacKenzie Bridge, and the Camp Creek Fire, in Portland’s water supply, … Read more
We use many different tools and models to evaluate upcoming threats of major fire spread or conditions which could allow rapid growth on new starts. I’m working as an evaluator on a project which is building new fire behavior forecasting tools for the California Energy Commission. This work is being supervised by the Spatial Informatics … Read more
Today’s Livestream aired at 8am. Lightning has ignited many fires in Western Oregon and several have become large. This video provides an overview of the largest fires in Oregon, in the Tyee Ridge Complex, the Chilcoot Fire east of Roseburg and Glide, the Lookout Fire, near MacKenzie Bridge, and the Camp Creek Fire, in Portland’s … Read more
Lightning has ignited many fires in Western Oregon and several have become large. This video provides a quick overview of the largest fires, in the Tyee Ridge Complex and east of Roseburg and Glide. We’ll look at how other recent large fires in the area may affect potential spread on the new fires. Heat satellite … Read more
About 10 days into a regional lightning bust across the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains, the fires on the Smith River, near Gasquet, east of Crescent City, have emerged as the largest and most complex. This video talks about how large fires are fought, using the Smith River Fires and smaller fires in the Klamath Mountains … Read more
Hi Folks, here’s the report for today, 8/19/2023. I won’t be reporting tomorrow due to a prior commitment to go up into the mountains. I’ll be back Monday morning most likely. Take care this weekend.
Wildfire reporting for 8/18/2023. NorCal and Oregon in separate videos. Getting ready for hurricane-induced winds. I don’t always have time to do videos of fires in Oregon, Idaho, Canada, etc. But since things have been relatively quiet, I did this short video. (And how could I not cover the Lookout Fire?) –Zeke
Welcome back to the Lookout! Yesterday’s lightning bust produced a number of fires throughout Northern California and the show’s not over yet. We’re expecting to see more thunderstorms rolling in today and throughout the week, mostly in the Sierra, Cascade, and Coast Ranges. There are a number of fires that have taken hold and have … Read more
Let’s talk lightning! At least once a decade in California, a few hours of abundant and widespread ‘dry lightning’ (no rain) turn an average wildfire season into an exceptional one. Thousands of wildfires start, some in remote areas, and many will burn until fall rains come. Unlike human-caused fires, which grow quickly when they ignite … Read more
September 13 at 10am: Forecasted to have less smoke hanging around the fire today. Inversion could lift early and increase fire behavior. Data from last night’s infrared flight was spotty due to heavy smoke and not worth interpretation. Overnight, firing operations were completed between Buckeye Peak to the American River. The fire was most active … Read more
New heat maps for the Mosquito Fire, near Foresthill and Georgetown, California. We also look at the overnight spread of the rekindled Mountain Fire, northwest of Mt. Shasta (no new mapping, just webcam imagery). There was no overnight IR, so we are skipping the Cedar Creek Fire in Oregon this morning.
California Wildfires – September 9, 2022 Mosquito & Fairview Maps and captions: Ryan Cowper Stephens Table of Contents: Mosquito Fire Fairview Fire Mosquito Fire UPDATE 10:30 am FIRIS inferred imagery: MAP KEY: RED perimeter to YELLOW perimeter is about 12 hours fire growth between 11pm last night and 1030 am today. GREEN boxes are structures … Read more
California Wildfires – September 8, 2022 Mosquito, Fork, Radford & Fairview Maps and captions: Ryan Cowper Stephens and Zeke Lunder 9/8/2022 Lookout Livestream Evening Update 9/8/2022 Lookout Livestream Morning Update Table of Contents: Mosquito Fire Fork Fire Radford FIre Fairview Fire Mosquito Fire Maps were updated three times on 9/8/22. UPDATE: 4:45 pm, 9/8/2022 FIRIS … Read more
Mosquito Fire – September 7, 2022 Maps and captions: Zeke Lunder and Ryan Stephens The Mosquito Fire started last night in the Middle Fork American River Canyon, at Oxbow Reservoir. It is growing rapidly today and will become a major fire. Under current conditions, firefighting will not control the head of the fire, and the … Read more
From Zeke:
New heat maps for the Mosquito Fire (near Foresthill), Fairview Fire (near Hemet) and Radford Fire (near Big Bear). Also, we look at potential power grid impacts of current fires, and talk about wildfire history, burn severity, and mapping tools we use to analyze fire effects.
Here’s Zeke’s edited live stream from today. He covers the Mill Fire, Mountain Fire and Rum Creek Fire. This is not the original live stream because Zeke had a layer on one of the fire maps that wasn’t supposed to be there. So we took down that live stream and put this fixed version back up. The Mill Fire update is on second video.
Zeke is planning on doing another live fire update around 7am tomorrow morning, September 5, 2022. Go to our YouTube channel and subscribe to catch it. Also, follow Zeke on Twitter, he usually puts some updated maps up in the afternoon if any of the fires have made any big changes.
Mill Fire update:
Happy September everyone. Zeke did a long video today and we’ve posted a transcript below. Zeke is livestreaming every morning at 7am Pacific Time on YouTube, unless otherwise noted on Twitter. He’s covering Rum Creek Fire and Six Rivers Complex every day at this time. Don’t miss his videos, subscribe to The Lookout’s YouTube channel. … Read more
We talk about new growth on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex and Rum Creek Fire. We also talk about how large fires are managed and supervised.
In today’s livestream, we talked about new developments in the use of drones for monitoring and backfiring during wildfires. This is part of a longer daily update video on firing ops on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex and new growth on the Rum Creek Fire.
More information on the drone being used click here.
More talk about the firing operations on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex and new growth on the Rum Creek Fire.
In today’s livestream, we talk about firing operations on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex and new growth on the Rum Creek Fire.