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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
 McKinney and Yeti fires Maps: Zeke Lunder Captions: Ryan Stephens Yeti photos and on the ground Yeti fire info: Jamie Allen Table of Contents: Zeke’s Video Briefing on YouTube McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney Fire Yeti Fire McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast: —McKinney Fire— To better understand what’s … 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
Daniel Swain, PhD is one of the world’s foremost experts in the interactions between climate, wildfire, and flooding. He joined Zeke at The Lookout to talk about the Dixie Fire specifically and how weather affects wildfire in general. He also had some interesting things to tell us about the Marshall Fire, flooding and climate … 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
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.
9/9/2021 at 3:30pm Here is IR mapping of the northwest corner of the fire, from 12:18pm on September 9. Some heat showing outside of yesterday’s spot fire near Butte Lake. EARLIER: 9/9/2021 at noon Here is the 10:30am 9/9/2021 perimeter for the northwest corner of Dixie, near Old Station showing spread since 8pm on September. … Read more
We just made a quick video about how forest thinning projects helped firefighters contain portions of the Dixie and Caldor Fires. If it is too chunky, maybe wait a few minutes for YouTube to post the HD version. Also, I’m aware about the missing audio. The missing section of audio shows different results of thinning … Read more
Here is a video briefing for 9/3/2021. 5:00am, 9/3/2021 Still quite a lot of action on the Dixie Fire. This writeup is based on interpretation of 9:30pm mapping flights of the southeast and northeast corners of the fire. The big wind-driven run to the southeast has dropped off the escarpment toward Highway 395 right at … Read more
DixieFire Video Briefing from September 2, 2021 The Dixie continues to spread east toward Highway 395. We talk about recent fire spread, tactics being used to protect Quincy and other communities, and about limitations on our ability to fight these monster fires.
9/1/2021, 6pm Update: Here is some afternoon infrared from Dixie. The southeast side of the fire, west of Milford, has been very active for several days. Strong SW winds have blown the fire about 20 miles northeast, growing the Dixie by about 65,000 acres in three days. The fire was about six miles from Highway … Read more