A hydropower flume sprung a major leak in Upper Butte Creek, above Chico, California on the 9th of August, 2023, spilling millions of gallons onto a forested hillside, and triggering a landslide which dumped over 1,000 cubic yards of rock, gravel, dirt, and clay into Butte Creek. This event caused widespread water pollution on the … Read more
Wolfy Rougle is Conservation Project Manager with the Butte County Resource Conservation District. She is a botanist, farmer, land tender, and illustrator. Among other things, she has written books about edible plants, and started the Butte Prescribed Burn Association (PBA). We met up with Wolfy to talk about her vision for citizen-led burning in Butte … Read more
Rain is coming, but will high winds spread the fire farther north before it begins in earnest? We take a quick look at IR mapping from the evening of 9/23/2023 and assess current fire spread and tactics. We also watch footage of a very low drop from a DC-10 airtanker on the NE corner of … Read more
Rain is coming! In today’s video, we look at weather satellites, assess the current lay of the Anvil and SRF Complex Fires, and talk about lighting large prescribed fires out ahead of weather systems. Also, we interview Rachel Smith, Klamath National Forest Supervisor. We couldn’t get a video interview, so had to use a puppet. … Read more
The Anvil Fire has been active, with drier, windier conditions over the past couple days. This fire has been burning for nearly a month just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first several weeks, but over the past week, it has seen major growth in most directions. We look at the … Read more
Strong winds have pushed the Anvil Fire around a bit in the past couple days. This fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of … Read more
The Anvil Fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of the fire, and review detailed maps of its recent movements. We also look at … Read more
The Anvil Fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of the fire, and review detailed maps of its recent movements. We also look at … Read more
The Anvil Fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of the fire, and review detailed maps of its recent movements. ” Thanks always … Read more
In mid-August, 2023, lightning ignited many fires across NW California. Several became large, but most have stayed fairly small by modern standards. 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. … 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
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
Today’s Livestream aired at 7:30am. This video provides an overview of the largest Fires in Northern California and Oregon. We look at firing operations and talk about how the fires have behaved over the past 24 hours. Aerial infrared and heat satellite data in these videos is current as of the morning of 8/30/20223. … 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
Lookout maps and commentary by: Ryan Cowper Stephens Table of Contents: Smith Complex Happy Camp Complex SRF Lightning Complex There are a number of fires burning in far Northwestern California and now we’ve got maps to prove it. Due to a mechanical failure on the plane used to map these fires up north, we’ve had … Read more
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
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
Stay informed and keep out of trouble! As a community-focused news source, our top priority is to keep our readers informed. While most of you know of The Lookout through our coverage of wildfires, we also have decades of professional mapping experience on water-related project here in California, and a large library of mapping data … 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
Things got a little squirrelly yesterday on the east side of the fire, but this morning’s top story is RAIN! Mosquito Fire – September 18, 2022 Maps & Intel: Ryan Cowper Stephens As we saw on the McKinney fire this year, rain over a wildfire creates new hazards. An extreme example of this … Read more
Six Rivers Lightning Complex and the McKinney/Yeti Fires – August 8, 2022 Maps and Captions: Ryan Cowper Stephens Table of Contents: Zeke’s Video Briefing on YouTube Six Rivers Lightning Complex Fires Six Rivers Lightning Complex Weather Forecast McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney Fire Yeti Fire —Six Rivers National Forest Lightning Complex Fires— … Read more
Six Rivers National Forest Lightning Complex Fires and the McKinney/Yeti Fires – August 7, 2022 Maps and captions: Ryan Cowper Stephens Table of Contents: Zeke’s Video Briefing on YouTube Six Rivers National Forest Lightning Complex Fires McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney Fire Yeti Fire Six Rivers National Forest Lightning Complex Fires … Read more
McKinney and Yeti Fires Maps: Zeke Lunder Captions: Ryan Stephens Table of Contents: McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney Fire Yeti Fire McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast: —McKinney Fire— To better understand what’s happening around the fire and in our maps, Click here to watch the Thursday morning August 4 McKinney … Read more
McKinney and Yeti fires Maps: Zeke Lunder Captions: Ryan Stephens Table of Contents: Mckinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney Fire Yeti Fire Mckinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast: —McKinney Fire— McKinney Fire Behavior Forecast: McKinney Infrared Lookout Maps: Areas shaded Yellow are where the fire is cooling down. Red to white perimeter … Read more
OAK FIRE – July 24, 2022 By: Ryan Cowper Stephens *Our Lookout fire maps are high resolution. Click the maps to open them in a separate window, there you can zoom and scroll around the map to take a closer look around the fire. This is especially helpful to know while viewing our maps on … Read more
