Forest Fires in the United States: 6 August 1999
Forest Fires in the United States
6 August 1999
As the dry, drought-like conditions continue across Western United States this summer the danger for wildfire has risen.
About 80 fires were estimated across northern Nevada. The fires approximately have burned 243,000 ha. Several hundred firefighters are fighting the big fires and the burning is expected to extend till the weekend (please also have a look at the below mentioned satellite imagery).
Several counties in Texas have already issued burn bans, and increased fire activity is reported in the northern counties as conditions worsen.
In Montana this week lightning resulted in 50 new fires.
In Wyoming and Colorado, more than 1,800 fires have destroyed 29,000 ha.
The BLM – Alaska Fire Service Initial Attack Management System (IAMS) is suite of computer applications developed by BLM/Fire to aid dispatchers and fire managers. IAMS Maps is one of these applications and provides graphical representation of various kinds of geographic data. Maps has been modified to produce output to a Web site to allow internet access to the data that IAMS stores. Dynamic data such as lightning (available May – September), fires, etc. are updated at the homepage of the BLM – Alaska Fire Service (select Maps / AFS IAMS Maps Viewer) every 15 minutes during the fire season.
Fig.1. IAMS image of active fires in Alaska, 5 August 1999
(Source: BLM – Alaska Fire Service )
Several active fire signals are recorded by OSEI on 5 August 1999 for the Western United States.
Fig.2. The NOAA AVHRR images show heat signatures and some smoke from areas of fire are visible between the cloud cover in Idaho and Nevada.
(Source: NOAA http://www.osei.noaa.gov/)
According the INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SITUATION REPORT the current situation for 5 August 1999 can be quoted as follows:
“…
CURRENT SITUATION:
Fire activity increased significantly in the Western Great Basin Area, requiring the mobilization of 5 Type II Incident Management Teams and an Area Command Team. Initial attack activity remains steady in the Northern Rockies and Northwest Areas. New large fires were also reported in the Northern Rockies, Northwest and Eastern Areas. Good progress was made on several large fires in the Northwest and Northern Rockies. Resource mobilization through the National Interagency Coordination Center remains high. High to extreme fire indices were reported in Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming, Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Oklahoma.
OUTLOOK:
Idaho, Oregon, Washington and the Rockies will continue to experience pushed moisture from a strong high pressure now extending up into Montana.
Isolated to widely scattered thunderstorms will again be the general rule across the west. Eastern Arizona, western New Mexico border and north into Utah and Colorado will have numerous thunderstorms. The Rockies will experience scattered thunderstorms.
Temperatures will change little with morning low clouds and fog continuing along the west coast. This will keep the maximum afternoon temperatures in
the 70’s. High temperatures inland will increase to the 90’s to around 115 in the lowest valleys and deserts. The mountains will see high temperatures
from 65 to the mid 80’s.
Minimum relative humidities will be around 10 percent in the inland valleys.
Winds will be light over most of the area with local gusts to 25 mph along the west coast. Winds will be variable and gusty near thunderstorms.
…”
Following basic fire data describe the fire situation in the UNITED STATES.
Number of FIRES in the last 24 hours HECTARES burning in the last 24 hours FIRES
YEAR-TO-DATE HECTARES
YEAR-TO-DATE 471 61,397 60,192 1,105,768
For detailed information regarding specified regions, please refer to the whole report.
