Relating to how fire affects the plants, animals, vegetation, trees, soil, and land it burns upon.
Not much new spread to report this morning on NW Ca. fires. After the rains 2 weeks ago, technical specialists on the incident management teams in NW California said we shouldn’t expect things to dry out enough to burn until right about now. In addition to relatively mild conditions, one factor affecting the lack of … 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 since then, though conditions have been slowly drying, there has been very little active fire spread. This video looks … Read more
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
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
Over a week into a regional lightning bust across the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains, the passage of Tropical Storm Hilary has slowed things down on many of the fires but some areas like Gasquet got less or no rain, and other fires are starting to dry out. This report shows fire perimeters on the Smith … 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.
A note from the editor/Zeke: Last week part of a hydropower flume in Upper Butte Creek, near where we live, in Chico, California, collapsed, sending millions of gallons of water down a steep forested slope, and causing a landslide of mud and soil which poured into Butte Creek. This has caused many days of extremely … 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
I was asked to write an essay for the Fire Adapted Networks blog. Wrapping up my thoughts on where we stand with fire was harder than I thought it would be. It’s not a happy story, but I think it’s critical we stand face to face with the true scale of our wildfire challenges. -Zeke … 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
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
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.
New heat maps for the Mountain Fire, near Gazelle. We check in on the stubborn Rum Creek Fire, and take a look at the Cedar Creek Fire, east of Oakridge, Oregon. Also, we duck down to Southern California to look at their new fires, and talk about wildfire severity, and mapping tools we use to analyze fire effects.
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
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
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
This video shows how a major wind event in early August, 2021, created extreme fire behavior west of Chester, California. We use satellite-derived forestry data to investigate whether past forest management had any effect on survival of trees in the approximately 100,000-acre area affected by the firestorm. This video is focused on forest conditions and fire behavior in the area around Chester and Swain Mountain. Fire behavior throughout the almost 1,000,000 acre Dixie Fire had a large amount of variety.
We’ll look at other parts of the fire in other videos. This video is a production of The Lookout (the-lookout.org), a user-supported wildfire journalism and education initiative run by Zeke and Erika Lunder, in Chico, California.
The Lookout went to Lassen Park with National Park Service fire and public affairs staff to bring you a look at post-fire conditions. Here’s our video:
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