00:00We're going to take a look at wildfires in the western U.S., and we've had a couple of large
00:06wildfires. One 59,000 acre plus wildfire in Utah, another one over 30,000 acres with low containment
00:14still for both of them. And let's take a look at the year so far. It's early in the season
00:20in
00:20general, and long term we expect this to be a near normal season according to our long-range team,
00:27but we are off to a faster start. Perhaps we'll get an earlier end because of the strengthening
00:32El Nino that could lead to a more robust start to the wet season in California, maybe in late
00:38October, but that's still months away. So, so far we've had 34,000 fires reported, 10-year average
00:44date 26,000. I am a volunteer firefighter, and I sometimes wonder exactly how consistently year
00:53after year that particular statistic is which fires are reported to the system and which don't. So,
01:00I tend to look a little bit more at this statistic here because the big ones do get into the
01:05database,
01:05whether it's a half acre in Rhode Island that gets reported as a fire or not, I don't know. But
01:11within
01:12the large acreage burnt statistics, those probably are a little more consistent year to year because
01:18if you're burning thousands of acres with a large wildfire, that will make it into the system. And
01:23the little scrubby ones that may be a quarter acre may or may not contribute to that tally and that
01:27doesn't matter as much. So, we've had 2.7 million acres burnt so far this year. Our average by now,
01:33in a typical year, we'd have about 1.8 million acres burnt by now. And again, it's a worse than
01:39average
01:40start. We've had some large wildfires in some newsworthy areas and also some not so newsworthy areas as well.
01:46But we're concerned about fire danger escalating. And this is kind of the precursor. It gets worse
01:52than this, but in the short term through Thursday, we do have a very high risk continuing and actually
01:57escalating through Thursday into parts of Utah and Eastern Nevada. Now, it's still warm in the
02:04interior northwest, but we're going to watch a big trough set in this weekend that's going to bring
02:10relief to the area to the north. In fact, I'm going to show you that graphic before we get into
02:14the
02:14models late this week, this is going to bring relief. And this will end the fire danger or at
02:20least mitigate it in the northwest. But at the same time, while it may mitigate some of the fire
02:25danger where the showers will occur, where the dew point is going to rise, where the humidity will rise,
02:30this same trough is not going to bring precipitation to much of the Great Basin south of Twin Falls,
02:36Idaho. And it will, unfortunately, really increase the winds. So this, even though it brings cooling to
02:43the north, it is going to bring a more significant risk of fire danger, one of the most significant
02:48fire danger risks so far we've seen this year. So here we are with the trough setting in. And you
02:53can see, as we get into Friday and Saturday, a giant pinwheel of low pressure that dives in from
02:59west of British Columbia into areas around eastern Oregon. It brings cooling and showers to those
03:06areas, but not to areas farther south. So the dangerous spot is going to be adjacent to that
03:11on the south, southern and southeastern flank of that, where you have strong winds, but you don't
03:16get that rainfall payoff. And there's great agreement here, by the way. This is the GFS. Let's go to the
03:21NAM in the short term, taking us through Saturday evening. GFS, NAM, trivial differences. And then the
03:27European, again, maybe they're not trivial differences. There is a slight difference in
03:31that the GFS is faster to plunge farther south, that brings stronger wind to some areas. But
03:37eventually, the European does bring this next vorticity maximum, little inflection point to sag
03:44things south. And regardless, it's going to be a windy time. Let's go to the other versions of the
03:50models, then I'll go back to the graphics. So you'll notice these are your 10 meter, it's about 32
03:55feet above the ground wind gusts. A little more than 30 feet above the ground. These are your wind
04:01gusts, maybe around rooftop level. And you'll notice that initially, each afternoon and early
04:07evening, we see a spike, and you get more greens in the Great Basin there. You're looking at 20 to
04:1230
04:12knot gusts. 1.15 to 1 is the ratio between knots and miles per hour. If you have, and you
04:20know,
04:20you have 20 knots, that might be about 22, 23, 23 and a half miles per hour, something like that.
04:27But you'll notice Friday, look at this, we got more yellows now. Suddenly, we have more areas
04:31spiking 30, 33 knots, maybe that's 35 to 38 miles per hour. And then we go into Saturday afternoon and
04:39evening. And here we have 37 to 39 there near Cedar City or Hurricane Utah and southern Utah. And then
04:46Sunday, look at this, into southern Wyoming and northwestern Colorado, we've seen 38 to 39,
04:50but also a nugget of 40 plus knots. So that's going to be like 45 plus mile per hour wind
04:55gusts.
04:56And while that's not going to be damaging wind necessarily, it is going to be certainly fuel
05:00for fires to spread because look at this, here are the dew point temperatures. You get the deep greens and
05:06the teal color and these blues, that's really humid air. You get into these blues and the purples,
05:12that's when you're way down here into very, very, very dry air in the Great Basin. So this is very
05:18dry air coupled with strong winds and it's a dangerous situation in here. So by the way,
05:25here's a look at our aerosol forecast for optical thickness, the thickness of smoke. We're looking at
05:31the atmospheric chemistry model here. I just wanted to point out the smoke being cranked out in a robust
05:35way by some fires in Utah, the 59,000 acre wildfire down to the south, the 30 some thousand acre
05:42wildfire
05:42to the north, and just a lot of smoke being wafted across this area. Now, sometimes you end up with
05:49terrible air quality for multiple days in a row because you have sinking air and no wind. In this
05:54case, we got a lot of wind, so it's being ventilated into the northern plains, but that wind is also
05:59leading to more fire danger. So it's not stale air, but it is a lot of smoke production because of
06:05volatile, volatile fire conditions. And look at these gusts of wind. We're forecasting 60 to 70
06:10mile per hour wind gusts there in western Colorado and eastern parts of Utah on Saturday. And that's
06:15when that previous fire graphic that I showed you, remember that one took us up to very high,
06:20three out of four. Well, we are going to the top of the scale here. Extreme fire risk, Utah and
06:26western
06:26Colorado, far northern Arizona, north of the Grand Canyon Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Big concerns
06:31there. And overall, when we look at the smoke forecast, the thickest smoke just lines up with
06:37that atmospheric chemistry model I showed you. Air quality issues, that in my opinion is secondary to
06:42the just sheer fire danger. Very dangerous setup here. We need that monsoon moisture to begin to
06:48work into areas further south. But for now, the Great Basin, lots of fire danger this weekend.
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