WILDFIRES: Here We Go Again

[Jonathan Whitehead]

The time is 3:15pm and the smell of smoke is back in the air along with a very large plume from the SW from the Granbury/Toller vicinity of Texas.

I hope the Southern Plains is able to survive this weekend unscathed.

If anyone has news or updates of wildfires please reply with information.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Pretty quiet in OK so far... nothing on radar yet.

Aaron

 

[David Schuttler]

Check the Shawnee area

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

nada.... I'm sure there are some small fires out there, but none are generating a strong enough of a plume to show up on radar (or are below the lowest tilt).

Aaron

 

[Jeff Snyder]

While RH is VERY low (~5% in far western OK), and temps are breaking records, winds are largely remaining in-check, with avg speeds near 20mph in the western 1/2 of the state, with ~15mph winds in the eastern half of the state. This is quite similar to last Sunday, when we were under a Red Flag Warning, but winds weren't very impressive... This likely makes fire control much easier, despite the low RH. In fact, it seemed that Thursday (no Red Flag Warning since RH was in the 25-35% range, but with winds 25-35mph with gusts near 40) was worse than both Sunday and today (both Red Flag Warning / Critical fire weather days but with winds around 20mph and gusts near or largely under 30mph) in terms of the number of fires and the time before crews can gain control of the fire. Tonight may be another story, however, but boundary layer decoupling may offset the increase in winds as mostly clear skies allow for radiational cooling.

EDIT: Aaron, the Shawnee fire could be seen on KTLX, particularly about 30-40 mins ago. Returns were in the -6dBz to 2dBz range.

 

[Mike Gauldin]

Holy cow, have you seen the fires all over the SE US.

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/FIRE/hms.html

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

hrmmm... grlevel3 stopped updating a few hours ago. lol. No wonder I haven't seen squat

Aaron

 

[Dan Christianson]

I think the DEVIL is ticked off, i mean enough with the fires already

 

[Jonathan Whitehead]

ok this was WAY CLOSE TO HOME. About an hour ago, a fire broke out just north of my house here off US377. I first noticed the big plume of smoke against the purple backdrop of the D/FW metroplex to my northeast. Then ten minutes later I see the a very bright orange glow to the north just beyond the ridge. Unfortunately winds are light out of the north. Kept an eye on it and it appears they got to it really quick cause the fires virtually gone from what i can see. But im watching news for updates.

 

[Jonathan Whitehead]

interesting article i found on Yahoo! news

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060109/ap_on_...re_us/wildfires

 

[Mark Farnik]

Lord, things are starting to get way crazy up here firewise in Colorado, too. Over the weekend two fires broke out; the Mauricio Canyon fire (started by a property owner doing a controlled burn in 40 mph winds with significantly higher gusts... IDIOT! :evil: ) west of the small town of Aguilar, halfway between Trinidad and Walsenburg, torched 4,500 acres :shock: burning five homes and threating dozens of others before a half foot of unexpected snow extinguished the blaze just as it was threatening to jump a road and into the town of Aguilar itself. You know what they say about Colorado weather...
The other fire was started by a blown transformer and grew from less than an acres to 400 acres in less than three hours on the east side of Carter Lake, west of Loveland, threatening many subdivisions and causing the mandatory evacuations of hundreds of residents as a 7 foot wall of flames swept through the tinderbox brush. They have it completely contained now, but it was quite frightening for a few hours there last night.

Fires in winter in Colorado aren't all that unusal in drier winters, but ones burning with the intensity of and consuming amounts of acreage similar to fires more typical in the late summer months occuring in the dead of winter are extremely unusual. These fires have promoted Governor Owens to issue a statewide fireban on all state lands below 8,000 feet. He made the comment that "This is January, but it is as dry as July right now." Denver hasn't seen significant precipitation since the 10th of October; over the past 60 days they've picked up only .55 hundredths of an inch and in the last 30 days the station has only recorded .04 of an inch of moisture. We are getting desperately dry around here, and where we had a wet, warm late summer and early fall, the grass was able to get tall and grow longer than it usually does, so it's especially dangerous at this point. We've had 6 straight months of above normal temperatures in Colorado and it doesn't look to be relenting any time soon. It feels more like late March around here than early January. Some of my mom's early spring blooming flowers bloomed the other day. :shock: I'm praying that there is a major shift in the weather pattern SOON and the Central/Southern plains will need get some massive, wet snow and rainstorms in the coming weeks/months to make up for the complete lack of moisture the last 3-12 months, depending on the location.
This weather is very, very strange. My grandfather is almost 81 years old, a native Coloradoan, and he says he has never seen such a warm fall and early winter around here in his lifetime.

 

[David Drummond]

Lubbock NWS put up a pretty informative page about the New Year's event. http://www.srh.weather.gov/lub/climate/Loc...t_01012006.html