In many wildland areas, smoke can often be seen throughout the winter. More than likely, this is not due to uncontrolled wildfire, but rather prescribed fires that are started when the weather is less conducive to catastrophic burns, allowing firefighters and crews to prepare for when wildfire season picks up again. A Rx fire (controlled pile burning) I helped ignite […]
If your company isn’t harnessing the power and audience of social media outlets in your disaster plans, you are leaving a huge resource untapped. Today we will be exploring some ways that social media can help insurance agencies stay informed, provide resources and information to customers, improve customer service, and spread the knowledge and professionalism […]
Wildfires are one of the most difficult natural disasters to model. Some argue wildfire modeling is 20 years behind hurricane modeling — and that’s not necessarily inaccurate. Hurricanes occur frequently, take several days to form and can be monitored via satellite. Hurricanes are also enormous and can be over 50 miles in radius. They are […]
Opera Fire Southern California’s first large wildfire of the season kicked off on Sunday afternoon (4/30) near the town of Highgrove in Riverside County. The Opera Fire quickly grew to 30 acres before the first responding fire units arrived on scene. The dry, grassy fuels burned rapidly, driven by gusty afternoon winds. Soon after helicopters arrived […]
One of the worst firefighter tragedies in history compelled NASA researcher, Mary Beth Wusk, to help develop a better emergency fire shelter. Wusk saw a news article on the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona in 2013, where a team of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots firefighters was overrun with fire. The team deployed their emergency fire […]
Outbreak of Tornadoes In the early morning hours of January 21st, a band of severe weather moved into the Gulf of Mexico region, producing a number of deadly tornadoes. More than 20 funnel touchdowns were reported in total. The worst tornado of the day hit near Purvis, Mississippi, and was rated EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale which rates […]
It’s no secret that California has been in a major drought for the last five years. This has resulted in larger and more aggressive wildfires during that time, keeping firefighters busy and resulting in increased levels of acreage burned. However, the California drought conditions are actually better than some experts predicted, and metrics other than […]
While the community of Gatlinburg, Tennessee grieves their losses and starts planning how to recover and rebuild, a new threat confronts the area. An inch and a half of winter rain helped put out the horrific fire over the weekend, but as we’ve covered in the past, wildfire-scorched areas often have an increased risk of landslides […]
On November 19, NASA celebrated the successful launch of its latest weather satellite, the revolutionary GOES-R (named GOES-16 once it is operational). This next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) will deliver better weather forecasting, severe storm tracking, and space weather monitoring for Earth’s entire western hemisphere. GOES Mission Overview Positioned roughly 22,000 miles above Earth’s […]
Junkins Fire Summary The Junkins fire started early Monday morning (10/17) in the Junkins Park area of Custer County Colorado during Red Flag Warning conditions. The fire exhibited extreme fire behavior due to dry conditions and 70 mph wind gusts. Officials moved to evacuate homes in the immediate fire path as the fire quickly burned […]