Fall Fire Season in the East???

I wrote yesterday about my weather observations for the National Weather Service and recording daily rainfall totals from my rain gauge located in northwest New Jersey. I had recorded less then one-tenth of an inch rainfall from Oct. 13 through Oct. 30, and knowing that wildfire danger often picks up in the fall I got curious about the fall fire season here in the east.

I had noted some media reports of smaller wildfires in MA and NH, see for example this report about dry and windy conditions in NH reported on Oct. 30 and small wildfires in MA. At the same time there had been some concern expressed in an October 30 article that dry conditions in NJ could increase wildfire danger, go  here to read the article on NJ.com. Finally there was a 110 acre fire in Rockland County, NY dubbed the Mt. Eve Fire according to the RecordOnline. I also saw a  reference to the Mt. Eve Fire in todays morning briefing from the Eastern Area Coordinating Center (EACC), being the only large fire activity in the East.

However and more importantly, I have also noted that while there has been some smaller wildfires in the East and one large fire reported in todays EACC morning report (over 100 acres, the Mt. Eve Fire), it seems that the fall fire season here in the eastern U.S. has not yet materialized. Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today offered this observation in an article he posted on October 29:

The eastern and southern fire season that follows leaf fall and the first severe frost seems to be still waiting in the wings (Bill Gabbert).

Gabbert also referred to a National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) report on the fall fire season in the U.S. in an October 29 post on their Facebook Page:

The normal transition of fire season back to the southern and eastern U.S. in the fall associated with leaf drop also did not occur as would be expected (NIFC).

All I can say on the afternoon before we may get some needed rain in my little corner of New Jersey is that I hope that fall fire season continues to not occur as NIFC expects.

Weather Observer

For the last eleven  months I have had a CoCoRaHS rain gauge that I got from the WeatherYourWay Store. No I do not make observations for CoCoRaHS though I do read and rely on their reports that I get either through my local office of the National Weather Service on their daily CoCoRaHS Precipitation Summary Page or from the CoCoRaHS page for my State. But I do volunteer work for the Mt Holly Office of the National Weather Service (NWS) as a skywarn spotter. I took my basic skywarn spotter training six days before Superstorm Sandy hit, and I made my first spotter report to the Mt. Holly office of the NWS the morning after Sandy.

As a skywarn spotter I call my local NWS to report severe weather eventss: tornado or funnel cloud, hail of any size, winds of 50 mph or stronger, wind damage (trees, wires down, damage to structures, snow accumulation, ice accumulation, and flash or river flooding. I monitor rainfall and it is useful information to have when I call the NWS with a spotter report. For example, when I made my first spotter report after SS Sandy the meteorologist asked me how much rain we had. I could not give an accurate answer because I did not have my gauge up, but I gave her an estimate. Another time, I was reporting small stream flooding along with the possibility that a River was rising quickly and might reach the point where she might spill her banks. They asked me how much rain I recorded and I told them. 

I enjoy making my observations for the NWS, I'm hardly an expert on meteorology, but I did learn something about weather when I was studying for the FAA private pilot written exam over three years ago. Remember I am not a licensed pilot, but I go on scenic flights with supportive pilots when I can. Anyway, making observations for the NWS seemed like a good fit because of my interests in aviation.

So, I have my sheet where I have been recording rainfall from my rain gauge and have noticed the dry weather in September and October. Yes, and I have cloud chart in my kitchen. So since I have been recording daily rainfall for the past eleven months, I am more sensitive to rainfall extremes. And it has been a tad dry here. The dry weather that I've observed here got me wondering about wildfire activity in the northeast and mid-atlantic regions of the U.S., and I'll be writing about that in my next post.

SS Storm Sandy's impact on the Delaware Bayshore

As many of you know, one year ago tomorrow, SS Sandy hit New Jersey. I was lucky, we only lost power, one tree down, damage to a couple of outdoor light fixtures, and a couple shingles off of my roof. Others were not as fortunate. I knew about the damage that the New Jersey shore (aka the east shore) saw. I am embarrassed to say that it was only yesterday that I found out about the damage to the Delaware Bayshore of NJ (or the western shore), thanks to an article I saw in the print edition of the Sunday Star Ledger, that may be found here on NJ.com. Please take the time to read the article. The title of the article and the headline in Sunday's Star Ledger is "The Forgotten Shore." After reading the article and spending time on NJ.com looking at the interactive map, videos and photos, I knew that I had to tell you about the Delaware Bayshore.

For those of you are interested in maps and seeing where the Delaware Bayshore region of NJ is, there is an interactive map featuring stories, videos and photos of those featured in the article. There is a nice photo gallery of pictures of the damage to the Delaware Bayshore and her people here (also found on the interactive map). There were a few videos that I liked, I picked out one to embed here for you on damage to dikes in Greenwich, NJ.

direct link to video

RIP David Black and Peter Brereton

I was saddened to read about the deaths of two pilots who died in two separate crashes in New South Wales, Australia within a day of each other. Both were flying in support of wildland firefighters fighting the wildland fires in New South Wales.

David Black, owner and chief pilot of Rebel Ag, died on Thursday Oct. 24 when his PZL M18A Dromader aircraft crashed while he was performing aerial wildland firefighting operations on a wildland fire in a remote and rugged section of New South Wales. He leaves a wife, Julie and three children. A press release issued on behalf of Rebel Ag may be found on this webpage of the NSW Rural Fire Service.

Peter Brereton, a pilot,  had just retired from a 40-year career with the CFA firefighting agency in Australia. However, when his help was needed to support the wildland firefighters in New South Wales, he was there. He was flying a Cessna 182 on Wednesday morning Oct. 23 after dropping off some spare parts for a helo that was being used in aerial operations on the bush fires in New South Wales. When he failed to return to the airport on Wednesday morning, a search ensued and the wreckage was found Thursday morning in rugged terrain. For more on Peter Brereton, read this article from The Age (out of Victoria AU. Brereton, 60, is survived by his wife, Lyn and five children.

My thoughts and prayers are with the family, friends, colleagues and all who love Peter and David. May Peter and David always fly in favorable tail winds.

A-26 Tanker's service in Canada still to come

Some of you know that I have written a couple of series about the Douglas A-26, first was a series about her military service last March, and then a second series about her service as a tanker in late July/early August 2013. To read both series, go here and stop from the bottom as the latest article is at the top and will include this one.

When I finished up writing about the Douglas A-26's service as a tanker in the U.S. on August 12, 2013, I wrote that I wanted to write about A-26 tankers in Canada. As sometimes happens, I had an idea for this series that has not yet quite panned out. I am still hopeful that I'll be able to return that idea in the future and write a series of articles on A-26 tankers in Canada. That being said, there are some things that I have learned about A-26 tankers in Canada. I will be working on this over the next couple of weeks and hope to post some articles about the A-26 in Canada before the American Thanksgiving Holiday. 

Remembering the Cedar Fire ten years later

direct link to video

Shortly after I began writing about wildland fires five years ago, I heard about the Cedar Fire which burned something like 280,000 acres +/- near San Diego. I believe that it still is the largest fire in California history. October, 2013 marks ten years since this fire. Fifteen people died and over 2,200 homes were destroyed in this Santa Anna wind driven fire. To read more about this fire see this article from the Ramona Patch (and another link to the video that I embedded above).

direct link to video

Added on Oct. 22, 2013:

CAL FIRE incident info on Cedar Fire (last updated Nov. 5 2003
The 2003 San Diego County Fire Siege: Fire Safety Review (pdf file)
Wikipedia article on Cedar Fire
2003 San Diego Fire Facts from San Diego State University (with links)

Air Tractor 802 Fireboss in action in Portugal

direct link to video

I am always on the lookout for interesting videos of tankers and helos in action. I don't believe that I've that many videos of the Air Tractor Fire Bosses fighting wildland fires. So when this video came to my attention recently I knew that I had to share it with out. Great footage, some of it shot from the cockpit, of two Firebosses from Portugal. Included are shots of the Fireboss' scooping water from a Lake as well as shots of drops over wildfires.

The commentary for this video (by Eder Navacerrada) is in Portuguese (about this video on youtube). I neither speak or read Portuguese, but I did find a translate utility from google which I used to get a rough translation of the about this video information:

Air Tractor 802 aircraft Fireboss for firefighting in the summer 2013In memory of bomberos who lost their lives in fighting fire. No staff on the ground, the work of air assets would be much less effective, thanks for the help

So it would seem from this translation that Eder posted the video in memory of firebomber pilots who lost their lives.

Aero Flite T-160

direct link to video

Conair is converting two BAe Avro RJ85 passenger jets into air tankers for Aero Flite. Recall that Aero Flite has a Next Generation contract with the US Forest Service for two RJ85's. The RJ85 is a later model in the BAe-146 series of mid-sized jet airliners with improved engines. BAe Systems has an article summarizing North American companies that are using the BAe-146 jets as air tankers.

Bill Gabbert of Fire Aviation reported in an article he wrote last summer that Conair is flight testing one RJ85 tanker designated as T-160. A friend of mine sent me a link to the short video that I embedded here showing T-160 making a test drop because he thought that you might be interested in seeing her make a test drop.

Campfire safety

direct link to video

In the almost five years since I have devoted this blog to aerial wildland firefighting and other issues about wildland firefighting and safety, I know that a certain number of wildfires are started from campfires. This short video will remind all of us about campfire safety. 

Wildfire in Zimbabwe

I was catching up with wildfire related news early today when I stumbled on a post in the international fire news forum about a wildfire in Zimbabwe, Africa leading me to a short article by the Associated Press posted by FoxNews on the Zimbabwe wildfires (dated Oct. 7, 2013). According to the article a 2.4 million acre wildfire (1 million hectares) killed 2 people in a remote section in the Zimbabwe bush east of Harare. If my conversion is correct, 2.4 million acres is about 3,750 sq. miles or according to a listing of U.S. States by size in square miles larger than the state of Delaware.

I spent two weeks in Malawi in the early summer of 2007, and wrote about my time there during and after my trip. Malawi is to the east of Zimbabwe and like Zimbabwe is landlocked. Anyway, in reading about this wildfire, I found myself thinking back to my time in Malawi. I am not writing this article to offer any insights or links to fighting wildfires in that area of Africa. Rather I write because two weeks in Malawi is a time that I will never forget.

Today, I am reminded of images of charred, burned out areas visible from the plane as we were descending to the international airport outside Lilongwe, Malawi. As our driver, Luzu, drove us from the airport to our lodging in Lilongwe I recall seeing areas of charred landscape along the road, some with tree stumps. As Luzu drove us around Malawi over the next two weeks, I would continue to notice charred landscapes from time to time. Sometime in my second week in Malawi I asked Luzu about these burned areas, why were they burned. He gave two reason, one was to clear areas for crops, and the other was to drive out rodents, which were later eaten.


By the way, about Luzu. I think of him often. We were in good hands. Nothing happened, the van was ok, we lost a rear bumper but that was it. No busted fuel line, no dragging tail pipe. We never ran out of gas, though it was a little dicey one day. We drove to a very remote area of Malawi not far from the Mozambique border on a rainy day. This was during the dry season when rain is sparse, and we got out of there but Luzu was a bit concerned about the rain. You see, during the rainy season the streams near the dirt road we were on in the rain will flood making those villages inaccessible by car. He thought he lost the keys to the van one day, but later found them. He took care of us.

Note: I corrected my faulty conversion of acres to sq. miles in an earlier version of this article. There are 640 acres in a square mile. 2,400,000 acres divided by 640 yields 3,750 sq. miles. I had over stated the sq.miles burned by a factor of 100. Opps. . .

MInden's Next Generation "Fireliner" BAe-146

link to video

It's been awhile since I wrote about the status of the Next Generation Tankers. I know that Coulson's C-130Q made her first drop on a fire on Sept. 20, 2013 (article from Fire Aviation). Recall that a DC-10 tanker has been flying under the Next Generation Tanker Contract since early summer. See my hopefully up to date status of the Next Generation Tankers on my Airtankers 101 page for more information on the Next Generation Tanker Contracts.

I don't think that the tankers from Minden, Aero Air, and Aero Flite are flying on contract yet. However, I recently came upon this video of Minden's Next Generation Tanker taking off on a flight test (also linked to on my Airtankers 101 page). The flight test shown on the video was done in early June 2013. Minden has dubbed this BAe-146 tanker the Fireliner, and you may go the Fireliner page on Minden's site to find out more about her including information on her specifications and performance.

Keeping your home and property safe in the wildland-urban interface (pt 2 of 2)

direct link to video on Home Improvements: A Firewire Approach

I learned about this video on Firewise home improvements from this video page on Firewise.

Keeping your home and property safe in the wildland-urban interface (pt 1 of 2)

I am not naive enough to think that a wildland fire  won't affect be because I don't believe I live in or near the wildland-urban interface. Perhaps because of NJ's recently changing weather (wet to dry and perhaps back to wet again), I found myself thinking about what homeowners can do to keep their homes safe. To continue due diligence regarding wildfire danger no matter what the weather is or is not doing.
I struggled yesterday to find something to share on this topic when I found these two videos last night on videos for the general public found on Firewise dot org . By the way, Firewise dot org has a lot of information on their website about what homeowners and communities can do to be firewise. 
I learned a lot from these videos. For example, over the last few years I had heard that homeowners should keep a 100 foot zone around their homes clear of trees and debris to ward off wildfires. But I never where that 100 foot figure came from. Now I do. Watch these two videos and you'll find out where the 100 foot figure came from. In a couple of days, I'll share another video from the same website with more information on how to make your home itself firesafe.



At the time I posted this on 10/5/13 at about 1:30 PM, I found that the audio was muted when using the Chrome Browser on my Mac. If you should have a problem, a workaround that worked for me is moving the slide next to the speaker icon, this got the audio working for me. Safari and Firefox on my Mac did not appear to have this problem. I don't have a PC, so I can't speak to what happens to Internet Explorer or other PC browsers.

Air Attack Over a Fire

One of the things that I am interested in are the roles of aircraft known as Lead Planes and Aerial Supervision Modules (ASM) that fly over many (but not all) fires here in the U.S. And what do the various personnel in these aircraft do. For example, what does the Air Tactical Group Supervisor (airborne firefighter) do? I recently found a short (10 to 11 minute video) from the National Interagency Fire Center called Firefighting Airspace, a part of their 2012 Annual Wildland Fire Refresher training. I certainly learned a lot from this video, and I hope that you will as well. The next time I read about or hear of a fire with a Lead Plane and/or an ASM over the fire I will have a better idea of the roles of these aircraft. Enjoy.



direct link to video from the BLMNIFC on youtube

Updated July 21, 2014: I share a lot of videos on this blog, sometimes I forget that I have already shared a video and I share the video a second time. That is what happened here. I originally shared this same video on Dec. 1, 2012.