Forest Fires in the United States: 28 July 1999
Forest Fires in the United States
28 July 1999
Images of the fires burning in Montana, Utah and California were not produced today by NESDIS/OSEI because satellite passes were not available over the affected regions. OSEI will continue to monitor the fire situation in these locations.
Instead of the usual satellite imageries the IAMS of the BLM – Alaska Fire Service is shown below. The 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, 28 July 1999
(Source: BLM – Alaska Fire Service )
Regarding the INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SITUATION REPORT the current situation for 26 July 1999 can be quoted as follows:
“…
CURRENT SITUATION:
Moderate initial attack activity was reported in the western United States. A new large fire was reported in the Rocky Mountain Area. Good progress was accomplished on large fires in the Northern Rockies, Eastern Great Basin and southern California Areas with containment accomplished on several large fires. The National Interagency Coordination Center mobilized a lead plane, type 1 and 2 helicopters, telecommunications equipment, a caterer, a shower, engines, crews and miscellaneous overhead. High to extreme fire indices were reported in Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and New Jersey.
OUTLOOK:
High pressure continues to dominate the weather across the western part of the country with monsoon moisture moving north out of Mexico into the southern states. An upper level trough along the west coast will keep the western and northern states dry and warm.
Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona will experience monsoonal moisture with showers and thunderstorms. Southern and eastern Nevada and southern Wyoming will have scattered showers. Arizona, southern Nevada and southern Utah will experience locally heavy rain with thunderstorms.
The rest of the western states will be dry with mostly sunny skies except for morning low clouds and fog along the coast. Local areas of Southern Idaho will see minimum relative humidities below 10 percent.
High temperatures will range from the 60’s and 70’s along the coast with 70’s to 80’s in the mountains. Mid 90’s to 110 will be observed in the lower
elevations and desert areas.
…”
The fire activity in the UNITED STATES can be described by the following basic fire data:
Number of FIRES in the last 24 hours HECTARES burning in the last 24 hours FIRES
YEAR-TO-DATE HECTARES
YEAR-TO-DATE 279 14,333 56,214 1,022,675
For detailed information regarding specified regions, please refer to the whole report.
