Forest Fires in the United States: 16 August 1999
Forest Fires in the United States
16 August 1999
The National Interagency Fire Center reported on 13 August 1999 that six large fires were burning in Idaho and New York. The areas of fire are shown in the large fire map below. Regarding to the Wildland Fire Update of the above mentioned Center, cooler temperatures, increased humidities and widely scattered rain showers are assisting suppression efforts on small and large fires throughout the western states. All fires and complexes in Nevada were contained on 12 August 1999, putting an end to the explosion of activity that burned a reported 1.3 million acres (520,000 ha) so far this year.
Fig. 1. Large Wildland Fires in the United States, 13 August 1999
(National Interagency Fire Center)
For more information please refer to the website of National Interagency Fire Center.
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.2. IAMS image of active fires in Alaska, 15 August 1999
(Source: BLM – Alaska Fire Service )
According the INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SITUATION REPORT the current situation for 15 August 1999 can be quoted as follows:
“…
CURRENT SITUATION:
Moderate initial attack activity was reported in the Northern California and the Northwest Areas, with minimal initial attack activity being reported elsewhere. New large fires were reported in Southern California and Eastern Great Basin. Good progress was reported on the large fire in the Western Great Basin. Very high to extreme fire indices were reported in Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Texas.
OUTLOOK:
Washington, Oregon, Idaho and west of the Cascades will be cloudy and cool with showers. High temperatures will be in the 60’s and 70’s. East of the Cascades will be partly cloudy and continued cool. The north will experience scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms, with high temperatures in the 60’s to the mid 70’s. The south will be mostly sunny with high temperatures in the 70’s to the lower 80’s. Eastern Idaho will have southwest winds gusting to 35 MPH.
Nevada will be mostly sunny, with southwest winds gusting to 25 MPH. In the north temperatures will be in the mid 60’s to mid 70’s. Temperatures will be in the mid 60’s to mid 80’s in the mountains and in the upper 80’s to 108 in the lower elevations. Scattered dry thundershowers in the extreme south.
Utah will be sunny to partly cloudy in the northwest with isolated dry thunderstorms. Winds will be southwest 20-30 MPH. Southeast Utah will have mostly cloudy skies with scattered wet thunderstorms. Temperatures will be in the upper 60’s and 70’s in the mountains and 80’s to upper 90’s in the lower elevations.
Southern California will be partly cloudy in the afternoon over the mountains and mostly sunny skies elsewhere. Temperatures will be in the upper 60’s to mid 70’s along the coast and the mountains and 80’s to 90’s in the lower elevations.
Texas will be mostly sunny except for scattered afternoon thunderstorms. High temperatures will be in the lower 90’s to near 105.
…”
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 106 4,966 63,779 1,555,355
For detailed information regarding specified regions, please refer to the whole report.
