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 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
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
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
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
The Dixie Fire continues to exceed everyone’s expectations. Yesterday the fire front moved between 2.5 and 3.5 miles toward Highway 36 and Chester on flat ground. This is pretty unusual for what I have seen in Northern California. Usually, our big fire runs are driven at least partially by slope, as it is easier for … Read more
I started The Lookout in early August, 2021. This post is made up of content I posted about the Dixie Fire before The Lookout was established on the forums.wildfireintel.org website, where a bunch of us fire-geeks share intel during active wildfires. 7/14/21 – 8am Looks like the VIIRS IR data is from about 2am. Blue … 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
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
We sat down recently with Wolfgang (Wolfy) Rougle to talk about prescribed fire, and efforts she is helping lead to increase local capacity for citizen-led prescribed burning in Butte County, Califorina. The Butte County Prescribed Burn Association has been running for several years, and has helped landowners to safely burn on private property around Forest … Read more