Pacific Northwest Not Seeing Break From Fire Weather Events

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Yesterday, firefighters had their 3rd straight day of Red Flag Warning conditions over the Cornet Fire (22,792 acres) and the Windy Ridge Fire (22,862 acres) in Oregon. The fires are burning within 4 miles of each other, and a cold front moved over the fire area yesterday. Historically, cold fronts have been responsible for low humidities and erratic winds that can cause extreme fire behavior and rapid fire growth. These conditions, along with poor situational awareness, have caused the loss of numerous firefighters’ lives.

Red Flag Warnings are usually issued to areas expecting low relative humidities and high or erratic winds. These circumstances lead to an increased potential for rapid fire growth; however, large fires can start and grow even when a region is not under a Red Flag Warning. As of today, the only area of the country under this type of Warning is Montana into North Dakota. There are over 50 fires in the country greater than 1,000 acres presently burning outside of this current Warning area.

 

 

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One Wildfire to Bed as Another Awakens

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RedZone has been keeping a close eye on Northern California wildfire activity over the past few weeks.  A recent flurry of dry lightning thunderstorms in conjunction with drought and fire prone conditions, have led to numerous large fires across the region.  The Rocky Fire, being the largest of the fires at 69,636 acres, is nearing full containment at 88% as of 0700 hours PDT this morning.  All evacuations in relation to the fire have been lifted, and CAL FIRE’s Incident Information webpage is projecting full containment around August 13th.  In short, it looks like the Rocky Fire is well on its way to bed.

Unfortunately, just as one monster is off to sleep, it seems another has awoken.  The Jerusalem Fire, which started August 9th just south of the Rocky Fire area, quickly grew to approximately 12,000 acres in size with no reported containment as of this morning.  In fact the Rocky and Jerusalem Fire are so close in proximity, only a single valley separates the two fire perimeters from one another.  Mandatory evacuations remain in effect as a result of the Jerusalem Fire, with structures in the area reportedly remaining threatened.  Hopefully the close proximity of resources being diverted from Rocky to Jerusalem will aid in containment efforts.

Although lightning has been the main culprit for numerous fires in the region, the cause of both the Rocky and Jerusalem Fires remain under investigation.

 

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USA Wildfire update – 206 and counting

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Alaska remains the unfortunate leader in wildfire, with more than 1.2 million acres involved in 17 major fires. RedZone is currently tracking 30 wildfires in Alaska.

As a comparison, the twenty largest fires in the Continental US combine to measure 382,000 acres – barely a quarter of the size of the Alaskan fires.

Within the CONUS, California has two of the five biggest fires: the Happy Camp Complex fire in Klamath National Forest at 134,000 acres, and the Lake Fire in San Bernardino National Forest at 31,000 acres. RedZone is currently tracking 18 wildfires in California, with varying levels of intensity and threat.

There are other significant fires in Oregon, Washington, and even New Mexico and Nevada. If you want reliable, timely intelligence on wildfire, turn to RedZone. For more information, visit our website at www.redzone.co.

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This screen shot from RedZone’s RZAlert dashboard shows the CONUS and wildfires currently tracked by RedZone.