Very High to Extreme Fire Danger Friday

15 years ago

While looking at the NWS Enhanced Weather page yesterday and today, I noticed that most of the state will be under very high to extreme fire danger later this week.

While it is easy to think that this sort of "event" won't affect any of us, I always keep a wary eye on the weather because I know how quickly wildfire can sweep across people's property, especially when it is driven by late winter and early spring's high winds.

This past weekend, several very large and dangerous wildfires occurred in northwestern OK and some firefighters were injured fighting one of those fires. I know at least one home and some outbuildings were lost in those fires. At night, when I logged onto the NWS Norman office's webpage at night, you could see the "heat signature" from these fires in several counties even at 7 or 8 p.m.

Almost 40 counties now have burn bans. Unfortunately, some southern counties (including my own) that have had burn bans in place for weeks or months have lifted them "temporarily", a decision I think they'll regret. Recently, a Texas county across the river from us lifted their burn ban "temporarily" and, after 24 grassfires/wild fires in 7 days, quickly reinstated it.

So, on the high fire danger days, I'll have my sprinklers set up in a perimeter around the house so I can turn them on to protect the landscape and house if wildfire threatens.

Please take the fire danger warnings seriously. We are going into the worst part of the Oklahoma fire season. My son has been saying for months "February is when it really starts", and here we are....and it has started, at least in NW OK.

Dawb

Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Norman Office Webpage

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Comments (3)

Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
A fire weather watch is in effect for 8 or 10 counties in northwestern Oklahoma this afternoon.

Tomorrow we're likely to see something similar for the western third of the state.
rjj1
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Dawn,

Do you know how long this page has been available from the mesonet? Weather folks mentioned it just now on the news.

randy

Here is a link that might be useful: Okfire
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The NWS in Fort Worth just issued a Red Flag Fire Warning for the counties in Texas a teensy bit southwest of us....not the county directly adjacent to us, but the county next to it and then the ones south and west of it. I wasn't really worried about our county this a.m., Diane, but more worried about the ones in western OK. Then, our weather changed....we're at 70 degrees, the humidity is in the 20s, and the wind is in the 20s gusting as high in the last hour as 35 mph. So, technically, we are starting to experience some dangerous fire conditions here. I hope anyone outside welding, burning brush, burning off pastures, etc. is watching the weather as I am and will be very careful. I am sure Steve is as careful as he can be, but sometimes sparks fly. One of our bad fire days in 2006 involved a welding fire started by a welder who worked for the then-chief of one of our volunteer firefighters. Stuff like that happens and is hard to prevent. I just hate that it is the time of year already that we have to worry about high wind and fire danger.
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Fire danger conditions have worsened so I've posted more current information on the Red Flag Fire Warning thread.
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Lynn, I am just so relieved to hear that the damage was minimal. (Although, of course, it never seems quite so minimal when it is your own place, and not someone else's.) If I were there with you now, I'd just give you a big hug and say how happy I am that you are OK, so consider yourself hugged long distance. : ) I know it is a terrible experience, especially as you're hurrying home and watching that big old plume of smoke, all the while wondering what has already burnt and what remains in danger. I am so proud of all the firefighters in Oklahoma--volunteer and professional--and the work they do. In our county, the 14 volunteer fire departments, the BIA and the forest service fire crews work together so well that it is just amazing. I'd like to second what you said, Lynn, about people supporting the volunteer fire departments. Most people assume that there is some kind of magical pot of money that the VFDs get from their city, county, state, or the federal goverment.....and that there is always enough money. That, of course, is not at all true. Most volunteer departments barely scrape by even though they are constantly working hard to raise money. On extreme fire danger days and extremely critical fire danger days, I am like a cat on a hot tin roof. I keep the fire radio turned on to the County Repeater so I can keep track of every fire in the county, instead of leaving it on the "pager" feature. And, I hate to get too far from home. We live in an area of rural mostly native pasture land too, and it can burn like mad. We've never had a fire as close to us as yours, but have had 2 on our land (but they were burning away from the house and outbuildings, and nowhere near fences of animals or anything). However, the ranch across the road catches fire at least a couple of times a year. (Their pastures back up to a highway and most of the fires start from the roadside.) For any of you wondering how to know when the fire danger is high, one of the easiest ways is to look at the NWS Enhanced Weather webpages. I check them daily, as they are informative and give info on all weather, and not just fire danger. On the enhanced weather page, the fire outlook is usually in one of the boxes along the right side of the page, near the bottom. Just keep scrolling down until you see it. You can click on it to enlarge it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Enhanced Weather Webpage
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Taira, You're welcome. I think it is so very important to be aware of fire. In 2006, the tiny town of Ringgold, TX, which is across the Red River from the western end of Love County, burned in 15 minutes as wind-driven wildfire just roared through the town. At our house in southcentral OK, the smoke from the Ringgold fire blocked out the sun. Listening on the fire radio was horrifying. Our son's college roommate at the time was from Ringgold and his family lost a house and vehicles and all kinds of personal stuff. (The house they lived in was saved, but an older house on the property burned.) It was an eye-opening experience for me because prior to that I didn't really understand how much harder wind-driven wildfires are to fight. I try to post warnings here for everyone who is at risk because a lot of us come here to talk gardening and may not realize fire is brewing a few miles away. Tigerdawn, I am just an amateur at understanding weather, but I understand enough to know when to be scared. (Also, enough to know when to be cautious!) As gardeners, the more we understand the weather, the better we can plan our gardens and cope with whatever the weather throws at us. Here in Oklahoma, the weather throws everything but the kitchen sink at us....and in tornadoes, I guess we could say the kitchen sink could go flying too. Tornadoes and severe windstorms are scarey. However, the most scared I've ever been in my life was when we were out working the April 9, 2009, wildfires. I've never seen fire move like that in my life, and the smoke was unreal. All our county's emergency personnel worked like maniacs to save property and lives and it was a horrendous ordeal for everyone involved. That day and night made such a deep impression on me and made me much more fire-aware than I previously was....and I'd worked fires for years with our VFD. There is fire and then there is FIRE, and y'all know which one we get in high wind/drought. On a side note, I always tell my spouse that if fire hits here, I hope it burns up the house and not the garden. Hey, the house is insured, but the garden isnt'! Dawn
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
15 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Randy,

I know it's been there for at least a year. I think that when they reformatted (was that last year?), it suddenly appeared out of nowhere. There was a prior fire info page I used to look at, but it wasn't nearly as wonderful as this one is.

I look at this page every single day (sometimes many times a day because it updates so often) and check our Keetch-Byram Drought Index numbers which, right now, are the highest I can remember seeing since we've been here. I had a harder time finding the KBDI back during the 2005-2006 drought and usually could only find a color-coded map that gave an approximate range. Every now and then a local weather forecaster or a NWS fire weather advisory statement would give us an approx. KBDI range for southcentral OK.

On bad fire weather days, I tell our firefighters what the burning index and spread component are so they can have them in mind while fighting fires. The spread component, humidity and wind speed/direction are critical numbers we need when fighting a large grassfire. The ignition component and fuel moisture loads are helpful, too, and I use the dispersal conditions not just to estimate how heavy smoke will be, but to figure out if it is a good day to spray something or to run the sprinkler. Sometimes, this year, the spread component has been scarey-high, especially on days when the wind exceeds 30 m.p.h.

At our monthly fire meetings, I tell the firefighters the current KBDI--and when it got to 630, we thought things were as bad as they could be Now that it is at 669, we all are really nervous about leaving our homes for more than a few minutes. It is very rare for anyone here to ever have a KBDI of 700 and I think it would take prolonged exceptional drought, or daily winds that were exceptionally high, to cause that to occur.

Once the KDBI exceeds 600, even live plants, organic material in soil, underground roots, etc. will burn. When the town of Ringgold, Texas, burned in 15 minutes on Jan. 1, 2006, I believe their KBDI was only about 630 and the firefighters had no chance of stopping a wildfire driven by winds in excess of 50 m.p.h.

One of the reasons that the prospect of grassfires and wildfires bothers me so much is that I know I'd lose organic material in the soil that I've been putting there for 10 years now. I'm not even worried about the house burning.....it is insured. My veggie garden and flower beds are not. : )

In 2005-2006 we had underground roots smoulder and smoke for days and days after a fire. People would see smoke literally rising from the ground and would call 9-1-1 to report a "fire". It was insane and kept the fire depts. running to certain areas repeatedly to check out the reports of smoke.

There, I've told you more than you asked, but I just wanted to emphasize how much I love this page.

Since our idiot county commissioners (and they know who they are) lifted the burn ban "temporarily" this week to let people burn accumulated trash, brush, pastures (awful decison!), etc., the fire depts. have been busy, esp. the ones in the western portion of the county. I've been spending a lot of time monitoring the OKFIRE page because of it. I also like the Burn Ban map.....just because it is a good barometer of how dry it is around the state. I hope our commissioners reinstate the burn ban next week.

I have the sprinkler running outside right now because today's fire danger is so extreme.

Enjoy the lovely weekend weather. I bet your plants are loving the heat in the greenhouse!

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Burn Ban map (updates constantly)

Very High to Extreme Fire Danger Friday

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rjj1

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