Wildfire Management

The Challenges of Managing Fire in the Wilderness

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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

How to maximize Good Fire? – NW California and Oregon Fires 9/5/2023

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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, but even before then, the majority of the fire effects on these fires were low-moderate severity and ecologically beneficial. We’ll … Read more

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 and Oregon Fires 8/30/2023

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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

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

The Fish Abide – Forging Hope After the Camp Fire

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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

Mill, Mountain, Rum Creek and SRF Complex – September 4, 2022 Livestream

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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:

 

 

Six Rivers & Rum Fire – September 1, 2022 Livestream

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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

Wildfire Drones & Aerial Firing – August 30, 2022 Livestream

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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 – August 5, 2022

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     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

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

Oak Fire – July 25, 2022

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OAK FIRE – July 25, 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

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

Workshop Therapy – Forging a Butte Creek Wild Chinook Salmon

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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

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

Full Interview with Daniel Swain, PhD

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  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

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

Southern Sierra Fires – 9/17/2021

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09/17/2021 – 8pm update from our correspondent, Chuck Ervin. Div A is clearing Paradise Ridge towards General’s Highway (as reported this morning).  Shepard Saddle Roads being improved as well with dozer and retardant line, courtesy of CALFIRE.  Structure protection is ready as far up as Grant Grove, down to Three Rivers and out to Silver … Read more

Lassen Park and Caribou Wilderness Fire Severity – 9/11/2021

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Getting the Wildfire Story Wrong We have been hearing a lot of people express concern about the amount of acreage burned in Lassen Volcanic National Park during the Dixie Fire. Part of this is the fault of sloppy reporting and articles by nationally respected publications that are getting the story wrong. This is common. Our … Read more

Dixie Fire – 9/9/2021

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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

Caldor Fire – 9/9/2021

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9/9/2021 at 7am Here is a video briefing focusing on Echo Lake and area between Strawberry and Kirkwood — the two remaining areas of the fire with the most heat.  Below is an assessment of the situation from our correspondent ‘Tumbleweed’ a retired wildland fire captain. IR from 22:33 (10:33pm) on September 8. Isolated … Read more

Dixie Fire – 9/8/2021 Heat Maps

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9/8/2021 at 7pm Here is updated IR mapping from 4:45pm this afternoon. About 3,500 acres of new spread since 8pm last night, shown in purplish-red with yellow outline. For the most part, fire was still in the 2012 Reading Fire (blue) footprint at 4:45pm, but there were some spots taking off outside the perimeter and … Read more

Caldor Fire – Fire Severity and 9/8/2021 Heat Maps

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9/8/2021 at 7am Below is a morning report from our contributor ‘Tumbleweed,’ a retired wildfire captain. Also check out our latest Youtube video, which discusses the burn severity of the Caldor Fire.  IR from 22:40 (10:40pm) on September 7. Isolated heat has been removed for clarity on some pics. Clear areas do not indicate … Read more