August 16, 2024: Overall, things are looking good around the fire today. Over the past 24 hours, crews have continued to make progress, particularly on the north and west sides of the fire where mopping up and securing firelines have been the primary focus. The recent cooler temperatures and higher humidity levels have moderated fire … Read more
Boise Fire backing into recent fires – Ryan Stephens After making a significant slope reversal and running to the top of Antenna Ridge, the fire has moderated over the past 24 hours and is now backing into recent fire footprints. Today, crews are working on the fire’s east side with the addition of two new … Read more
Successful Firing Operation at the Park Fire: A Case Study Satellite imagery by Zeke Lunder Written by Ryan Stephens In late July, we took a trip up Highway 32 to observe the aftermath of a firing operation conducted to control the spread of the Park Fire. This operation was a critical measure to mitigate the … Read more
July 28th Update – Ryan Cowper Stephens The Park Fire, which started on July 24, 2024, has rapidly expanded, affecting Butte, Plumas, Shasta, and Tehama counties. As of the latest updates, it has burned approximately 357,341 acres and is now 12% contained. Yesterday we had our first break from extreme burning conditions. The inversion set … 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 a week into a regional lightning bust across the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains, the passage of Tropical Storm Hilary brought a mix of rain and wind to NW California. The Gasquet area missed out on the rain, but got strong NE winds on the backside of a low pressure system which cleared out after … 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
Mop up continues around Foresthill and things are looking good on the northwestern area of the fire leading up to today’s expected wind event. Mop up continuing on the northeast area of the fire along Foresthill, Chicken Hawk and Deadwood Roads. Firing overnight around the Middle Fork of the American River along the Inner Bay … Read more
Firing operations went well last night and no issues were reported around the fire. Yesterday saw moderate areas of growth on the northern, southwestern and eastern end of the fire. A little dryer and warmer today but more or less similar conditions around the fire as we saw yesterday are expected. Tomorrow we’re expecting big … Read more
Mosquito Fire – September 15, 2022 Intro & Livestream: Zeke Lunder Maps & Intel: Ryan Cowper Stephens September 15 at 7am – Fire behavior was pretty subdued yesterday under smoke and mild winds. We took a trip out to the north end of the fire and connected with the Division Supervisor working on a strategy … Read more
September 14 at 7am – Fire made big moves yesterday. Our livestream last night detailed the Mosquito Fire‘s spread toward Foresthill and east, with extended Q&A on forestry, prescribed fire, and how fuel and weather conditions yesterday helped prevent the fire from jumping Foresthill Road. In the Evening Update, footage from today: We went … Read more
September 13 at 10am: Forecasted to have less smoke hanging around the fire today. Inversion could lift early and increase fire behavior. Data from last night’s infrared flight was spotty due to heavy smoke and not worth interpretation. Overnight, firing operations were completed between Buckeye Peak to the American River. The fire was most active … Read more
New heat maps for the Mosquito Fire, near Foresthill and Georgetown, California. We also look at the overnight spread of the rekindled Mountain Fire, northwest of Mt. Shasta (no new mapping, just webcam imagery). There was no overnight IR, so we are skipping the Cedar Creek Fire in Oregon this morning.
California and Cedar Creek Wildfires – September 11, 2022 Mountain, Mosquito & Cedar Creek We edited our morning Lookout Livestream and added a section about how far the Mosquito Fire is from Truckee and Tahoe, and landscape conditions that might affect its spread. Also, the video has updated maps of new spread on the Mountain … Read more
Evening Update – Mosquito, Mountain & Cedar Creek Wildfires – September 10, 2022 This video gives an update on fire spread of the fires, above, and has an extended Q&A session with Zeke Lunder answering a wide range of questions on wildland firefighting topics including: Why don’t we fly air tankers in heavy smoke or … Read more
California and Cedar Creek Wildfires – September 10, 2022 Mosquito, Fairview, Forward & Cedar Creek Mosquito Fire – 10am Update If you watched our Mosquito Fire livestream this morning (September 10, 2022), the 7:45am IR flight shows the following developments since the 10pm imagery used in our YouTube presentation. Color key: Green dots are structures. … Read more
California Wildfires – September 9, 2022 Mosquito & Fairview Maps and captions: Ryan Cowper Stephens Table of Contents: Mosquito Fire Fairview Fire Mosquito Fire UPDATE 10:30 am FIRIS inferred imagery: MAP KEY: RED perimeter to YELLOW perimeter is about 12 hours fire growth between 11pm last night and 1030 am today. GREEN boxes are structures … Read more
California Wildfires – September 8, 2022 Mosquito, Fork, Radford & Fairview Maps and captions: Ryan Cowper Stephens and Zeke Lunder 9/8/2022 Lookout Livestream Evening Update 9/8/2022 Lookout Livestream Morning Update Table of Contents: Mosquito Fire Fork Fire Radford FIre Fairview Fire Mosquito Fire Maps were updated three times on 9/8/22. UPDATE: 4:45 pm, 9/8/2022 FIRIS … Read more
Mosquito Fire – September 7, 2022 Maps and captions: Zeke Lunder and Ryan Stephens The Mosquito Fire started last night in the Middle Fork American River Canyon, at Oxbow Reservoir. It is growing rapidly today and will become a major fire. Under current conditions, firefighting will not control the head of the fire, and the … Read more
From Zeke:
New heat maps for the Mosquito Fire (near Foresthill), Fairview Fire (near Hemet) and Radford Fire (near Big Bear). Also, we look at potential power grid impacts of current fires, and talk about wildfire history, burn severity, and mapping tools we use to analyze fire effects.
New heat maps for the Mountain Fire, near Gazelle. We check in on the stubborn Rum Creek Fire, and take a look at the Cedar Creek Fire, east of Oakridge, Oregon. Also, we duck down to Southern California to look at their new fires, and talk about wildfire severity, and mapping tools we use to analyze fire effects.
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:
We talk about new growth on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex and Rum Creek Fire. We also talk about how large fires are managed and supervised.
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.
More talk about the firing operations on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex and new growth on the Rum Creek Fire.
In today’s livestream, we talk about firing operations on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex and new growth on the Rum Creek Fire.
We talk about firing ops on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex, new growth on the Rum Creek Fire, and look at two fires being managed for resource benefits in Yosemite National Park. Also, an overview of some of the intel websites I use.
We look at fires on the Six Rivers and Rogue/Siskiyou National Forest, check progress on firing ops, and look at what might be coming next.
In today’s video, we take a quick look at the growth of the SRF Lightning Complex fires on the night of August 22, 2022 and then talk about the enormous wildfires of fall 2020.