Random Ramblings: Aerial Wildland Firefighting

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.

Monday, January 29, 2018

Oklahoma late winter 2018 fire season underway

Last year I got interested in a Wildfire Detection Notification App (WFDN) that was first developed and used by the staff of the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Norman Oklahoma Weather Forecast (WFO) in the spring of 2016 . The Norman OK WFO continued to use the WFDN in the spring 2017 (link to July 3 2017 article) which is making a big difference. I remain interested in wildfire activity in OK and knowing that Oklahoma and environs may soon be entering wildfire season I have been trying to pay attention to what is going on wildfire wise in that part of the United States.

I noticed late last week when looking at the NWS main website that portions of Oklahoma and environs were under red flag warnings. I was tied up in other matters, so did not have a chance to check into this further until today. One of the first things that I did was to check out the WFO Norman OK Facebook page. Like many WFO’s Norman OK posts forecast updates as well as alerting their residents of fire danger and other significant weather events. I found their post warning the public about a red flag warning on January 25th and another post today (January 29th) alerting people in their forecast area of elevated fire danger for Tuesday, January 30th. Current fire danger information from the Norman OK WFO may also be found on the WFO Norman OK fire weather page

I then went to the NWS fire weather page (out of the NWS Storm Prediction Center) where I noted that elevated and critical fire danger for January 30th in portions of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado. I downloaded a kmz file that I loaded into Google Earth to get the following image to share with you.

There has been wildfire activity in and around Oklahoma, but to the best of my knowledge, the wildfires are not (yet) severe. The WFDNA continues to be used in the Norman OK forecast area.

The Oklahoma Forestry Service has a nice Fire News Blog with updates about wildfire activity, it may be found here.

Here are a couple of media reports that I found about the early wildfire season in Oklahoma:

News9 January 19th report and video on grass fire in the Oklahoma City area

News9 January 21st report and video on two large grass fires near Calumet

News9 January 27th report and video on two grass fires near Clinton

Pawhuska Journal-Capital January 26th report on recent wildfire activity and burn bans

I will be doing my best to try to keep informed, as I can, about wildfire activity in Oklahoma and environs and will report back here.

Next up on January 31, 2018: extreme drought in portions of the Southern Great Plains -- OK and TX

Stay safe!