Good evening, If you are visiting The Lookout for the first time, please check out my intro from yesterday, and the ‘About The Lookout‘ page. 7:30pm update: Here are updated heat maps for the Caldor Fire, captured at about 6:30pm on August 21, 2021. At this time, the eastern edge of the fire is on … Read more
Hello, If you are just visiting The Lookout for the first time, please check out my intro from yesterday, and the ‘About The Lookout‘ page. Full fire weather and fire behavior forecasts at bottom of this page. 3:00pm UPDATE: The Caldor Fire is making major runs to the east today. Between 8pm last night and … Read more
8pm update: Genesee Valley was the hub of much of the action today. Mill Creek/Highlands area looks like it is cooling down. Minor spread on N side of Lassen Park, and Fredoyer Summit. Some movement south toward Milford. Infrared mapping from 5pm, 8/21/2021. EARLIER: Good morning, everyone. Today is my dad’s 76th birthday and the … Read more
Good evening. Here is the afternoon update on conditions through early afternoon on the Caldor Fire. These maps are produced by The Lookout. This information is intended to supplement, not replace information from official fire information websites like InciWeb. We make our maps from publicly available heat scan data (we call them “IR, or infrared … Read more
UPDATE: 7:00 pm. Fire ran across the floor of Genesee Valley at the Heart K Ranch and made a big run up the hillside underburned 2 years ago in the Walker Fire (blue). That the Walker Fire reburned surprises the hell out of me. Most of the large trees survived the 2019 burn here, and … Read more
Below are maps of the Caldor Fire burning in El Dorado National Forest made from infrared data captured at 8:45 pm on August 19. The white lines show 24 hours of fire spread and images are laid out in a clockwise rotating direction around the fire, starting at Omo Ranch. Currently, we are focusing on … Read more
UPDATE: 6pm IR. It looks like they were able to hook the spot fire on Fredonyer we were looking at earlier this afternoon. There is a small slopover on Hamilton Mountain Road in the same area, but no major blowouts along the road. I would expect crews to be firing the rest of this road … Read more
Lots of wind today, but no huge losses on any of the major lines as of 3pm. If you are a student of wildfire, this clip will probably give you the chills. Most firefighters have seen the Eagle Fire Burnover video many times in annual refresher trainings. It’s shown to remind us about unique dangers … Read more
Here is a weather forecast from a NWS forecaster that I got from the forums.wildfireintel.org website. Major takeaways: The offshore winds will continue for 48 hours, followed by a reversal to gusty onshore winds. These reversals will complicate firefighting efforts across the region. Farther out, there is potential for moisture from the Pacific Ocean to … Read more
I wrote this piece a couple days after my hometown of Westwood narrowly missed being burned up by the Dixie Fire. We had spent the previous week watching closely as the fire moved steadily, and sometimes rapidly, toward town. Everyone up there was evacuated, and a lot of old friends were leaning on The Lookout … Read more
Good evening. With a half million-plus acre fire, there is always something to report! Most fire we are looking at tonight is in locations that have been active for the past week, so let’s start the check-in. Today we got data from a Sentinel satellite orbit. This is like Christmas for map geeks. Here is … Read more
Good morning. If you are evacuated, I’m feeling for you, and hope I can give you some good news. UPDATES: An IR recon plane flew over the fire at 1pm, and captured this mapping of the fire south of Janesville. Not a lot of growth in past 10 hours. White line shows fire as mapped … Read more
UPDATE: The new fires on Morgan Summit have grown together and are 10,000 acres. A firing operation along Highway 89 aimed to keep the fire to the east of the Park Road. Firing occurred at the Visitor Center at the old ski area, and I have no intel on any damage to facilities there. Here … Read more
Good evening, The big news this evening is explosive growth of new lightning fires on Morgan Summit, on Highway 36 west of Dixie. These have escaped initial attack and are now growing rapidly. With the forecast winds for next two afternoons, there is a strong possibility they will merge with Dixie in next few days. … Read more
Good morning everyone, Well, we continue to grind this one out. On this topic, it is worth mentioning that many of our worst wildfire disasters and accidents have happened during transitions between management teams. The east zone will be transitioning to a new Federal Type I Incident Management Team this afternoon. Often, a lot of … Read more
Good evening. The Dixie Fire made some moves today. Nothing on the west side really blew out more than a mile between 6:30 am and 6:30 pm, but there were a few noteworthy runs. The east side of the fire pushed up a towering column, and I think this kept the IR plane from getting … Read more
Good morning, this post has been update with detailed maps from IR captured at 6:30 am, 8/14/2021. There were some firing operations along the Highway 36 corridor last night. Don’t know exactly where, but Westwood and other communities are still safe. Biggest change this morning is the fire added about 4,000 acres on the west … Read more
Another nerve-wracking day on the Dixie, waiting for Westwood to burn. And it did not. I mainly concentrated on the Westwood Sector today, and took it slow after being up late last night. We got an IR flight at 5:20 pm, but much of the fire activity took place after that – some portions of … Read more
We use the term ‘fire severity’ to describe a fire’s level of impact on the vegetation, soil, and overall ecology of a place. High severity isn’t always bad – some ecosystems like chaparral are well-suited to it. You can really go down a rabbit hole on this topic, and every place is different in what … Read more
Just another crazy day/night on the Dixie Fire. Last night’s post is bleeding into today’s – what an night! As of 2am, Westwood, Clear Creek, Hamilton Branch, and the Peninsula were still standing. But today is Friday the 13th, it’s another critical fire weather day, and our communities are literally surrounded by fire. There has … Read more
11:20 Update: Today’s weather is problematic for firefighters. The smoke is lifting out, and the forecasts call for increasing instability in the atmosphere. The Haines Index is a number which meteorologists use to quantify the potential instability, with a score of 6 being the highest. Today’s Haines is a 6. We often see big runs … Read more
Good evening, everyone. The fire was relatively subdued under heavy smoke today. The biggest run was about a mile, inside the 2007 Moonlight Burn, headed east toward Antelope Lake on the east flank of the fire, north of Eisenheimer Peak. Another run of about 2,000 feet, headed southwest, occurred on the northern flank of fire … Read more
I want to start this post off saying I am not very up-to-date with intel from the ground right now. I don’t usually listen to scanners or radio traffic unless I am in the field, and get most of my field-level intel from talking to friends who are in-the-know. Right now I am mainly interpreting … Read more
The fire burned actively today on the fronts which are still hot. Things seemed to be most active around 4:00 pm. Smoke limited visibility on the webcams. This intel sleuthing means working with all the tools we have, and the platforms that update the most often are the ones that have the coarsest texture. Even … Read more
All detailed images are from IR flight at midnight last night 8/9/2021. White line shows 24 hours of fire spread. Other than the big blowup on the east side of the fire, the rest of the Dixie Fire didn’t move a lot yesterday or overnight. I got some cleaner IR data captured last night at … Read more
Today I did an interview on KQED: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101884878/dixie-fire-3rd-largest-in-california-history Content below is from KQED website: A firefighter surveys a destroyed downtown during the Dixie fire in Greenville, California on Aug. 5, 2021. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images) The Dixie Fire, which has ravaged hundreds of thousands of acres in Northern California and leveled the … Read more
There is a lot of activity on the East Zone of the fire tonight. The fire blew up this afternoon after the last IR flight of the day, so sitting in front of my computer far from the fire, I don’t have any solid intel on where exactly it is. The map below shows where … Read more
Good morning. I’m going to be on KQED today at 9:30 am on their Forum program. My auntie lives in Berkeley and she is going to be very excited. I think I’ll let it be a surprise. Not a lot of major fire spread since last night, though the spread on Keddie Ridge by Deerheart … Read more
Good evening. The fire continued to burn actively on the north flank between Swain Mountain and County Road A-21, and on the east flank north and east of Moonlight Peak. The fire did not spread as far today as yesterday in these areas. Several spot fires crossed A-21. I don’t have any intel yet on … Read more
Not a lot to report since last night. Read last night’s post here. Main update is overnight IR showing spread of the 2 problem areas discussed in last night’s post. 1. East of Swain Mountain toward County Road A-21. 2. East of Moonlight Peak in the 2007 Moonlight Burn. The fire continued to spread east … Read more