Fire Education

Where is the heat? NW California and Oregon Fires 9/4/2023

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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

Understanding Fire Effects

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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

NW California and Oregon Fires 8/31/2023

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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

NW California Fire Model Runs for 8/29/2023

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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

NW California and Oregon Fires 8/29/2023

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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

Modeling Fire Behavior for NW California Fires

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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

Northwest California Wildfires — 8/25/2023

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Almost two weeks into a regional lightning bust across the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains, the passage of Tropical Storm Hilary and subsequent wet lightning storms have kept things in slow motion on some fires, while others have dodged the rains and made major wind-driven runs. Several large fires are now established on the landscape, and … Read more

Fighting Large Fires in NW California–8/23/2023

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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

Dry Lightning

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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

Wildfire 101

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This piece comes to us from Brè Orcasitas. Brè is the author of The Evolving Nomad blog site and a wildland firefighter with 16 years of experience which includes: Engine Crew, Hotshot Crew, Helicopter Rappeller, Smokejumper, and Field Operations Specialist. Wildfire 101 When you spend your life hiking around steep hillsides, digging in the dirt and … Read more

Seeing the Big Picture – August 27, 2022 Livestream

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We talk about firing ops on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex, new growth on the Rum Creek Fire, and look at two fires being managed for resource benefits in Yosemite National Park. Also, an overview of some of the intel websites I use.

 

 

Six Rivers Lightning Complex – August 19, 2022

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Hi everyone! Here’s Zeke’s latest video on the SRF Lightning Complex with an exciting live Q&A with viewers during the last eight minutes of the stream. He looks at historic logging around the SRF Lightning Complex Fires near Trinity Village, Salyer and Willow Cree in Trinity County, California. He also looks at the Kennedy Fire, … Read more

McKinney and Yeti Fires – August 6, 2022 – WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF MASSIVE FISH KILL ON KLAMATH RIVER

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McKinney and Yeti fires Maps and Captions: Ryan Stephens and Zeke Lunder Yeti photos and on the ground Yeti fire info: Jamie Allen WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF MASSIVE FISH KILL ON KLAMATH RIVER   Table of Contents: Zeke’s Video Briefing on YouTube Debris Flows and Fish Kill McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney … Read more

McKinney Fire – August 1, 2022

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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

McKinney Fire – July 31, 2022

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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

McKinney Fire – July 30, 2022

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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

PyroFiction Hopepunk Biketopia

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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

Interview with Veteran Wildland Firefighter Jim Klump

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Zeke sat down with Jim Klump, a veteran wildland firefighter and old-school Redding smokejumper who was the District Fire Management Officer on the Plumas National Forest for 25 years. They talked about the intersection of fire and forestry, land management, people, leadership, and history. The interview took place in May 2022.

 

They also talked about PTSD, firefighting tactics, landscape-scale backfiring operations, climate change, immigration, the culture of the Forest Service from the 60s to the present, and the survival prospects of our wildfire-threatened rural communities.

This video features Google Earth map animations, historic aerial photos, historic photos from UC Davis and Chico State and aerial video from the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center.

 

 

Fire Management in the Ishi Wilderness & Lassen Foothills

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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

New Mexico Fires – May 14, 2022

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Hermits Peak and Cerro Pelado Fires May 14, 2022 Maps and Captions: Ryan Cowper Stephens Satellite Images and interpretation: Zeke Lunder Detailed New Mexico fire updates may also be found at: https://nmfireinfo.com/ https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/ *Our Lookout fire maps are high resolution. Click the maps to open them in a separate window, there you can zoom and … Read more

Dixie Fire Stories Interview

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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

Structure Losses in the Camp Fire

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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

A Conversation with Sue Husari

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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

How Can You Tell If A Fire-Damaged Tree is Going to Die?

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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

Guest Photo Essay – Southern Sierra Forests

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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

Fawn Fire – 9/24/2021 Morning Update

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Good morning, Our latest intel from the Fawn Fire is infrared mapping flights from 9:40pm on September 23. The white line is where fire was at noon on September 23. Yellow line is 1pm, first red line is 6pm, and outermost line from 9:40pm. Here are still images of the same information from the video. … Read more

Southern Sierra Fires – 9/21/2021

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9/21/2021 at 6am KNP COMPLEX Today’s Briefing Map IR Interpreter’s log Jeremy Hurd: Minor growth to perimeter, with the most significant in the SSW areas. Center of the perimeter continues to show some isolated heat sources as the scattered heat continues to withdraw toward the outer perimeters. Below are maps of the KNP Complex burning … Read more