Regular readers know that I have lots of respect for the work the National Weather Service Incident Meteorologists do when the are assigned to a specific for a two-week deployment. See for example my May 17th 2017 post where you will learn a little about what IMETs do from a NWS incident meteorologist and this November 2016 post where you will see a video of an IMET answering questions from a middle school class.
I thought that you might be interested in recent IMET deployments to wildfires in Northern California. So, I went to the NWS IMET Facebook page where I found the following IMET deployments since October 9th. Information about these and other wildfires burning in northern California and elsewhere in California, along with a map, may be accessed from the CAL FIRE Incident Page.
Before I go any further, I want to pause and say how much I appreciate all of you IMETs who are working these horrible and devastating wildfires in northern California. I know that you are working hard monitoring weather conditions on your fire. Especially but not limited to monitoring wind forecasts, I understand that some of these wildfires experienced more high winds the other night. What you do is so crucial to keep firefighters on the ground safe. Thank-you. And you stay safe as well.
Edited on October 14 at 6:30 AM to add: The IMETs working the northern California wildfires as well as nearby NWS Weather Forecast Offices of Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area will be monitoring Red Flag Warning conditions that are expected occur this weekend, October 13th to 15th (see my post of October 13th for more information).
IMETS save lives!
The four deployments below were on the evening of Monday, October 9th.
The Redwood Complex is part of the Mendocino Lake Complex of Wildfires.
The Tubbs Fire is part of the Central LNU Complex of Wildfires
The Atlas Fire is part of the Southern LNU Complex of Wildfires
Last, but by no means least, an IMET Trainee (to read more about IMET trainees read my July 21st post) was deployed to the Central LNU Complex on October 11th. Wow, I wish this trainee well as they work with an experienced IMET and fill their taskbook.
Here is a screen grab I did this morning (October 13th) from the NWS EDD interactive map showing current IMET deployments (the pinkish-purple circles) in Northern California. To the best of my knowledge, all the deployments that I have referenced above are mapped out below. Note that IMET locations are found in fire weather under more layers.
I have blogged about aerial wildland firefighting since 2009. I am not a firefighter and am not a pilot, just an interested bystander who wants to learn more and share what I learn here. Join me here as I blog on the aircraft and the pilots who fight wildland fires from the air in support of crews on the ground. I also blog on concerns affecting fire crews on the ground as well as other aviation and meteorology issues. Learn what it takes to do jobs that are staffed by the best of the best.
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