IMETs ready to save lives: first deployment of 2020

What may have been the first NWS Incident Meteorologist (IMETs) was deployed on June 3rd. I will get to that in a minute. I love because they save lives. The are National Weather Service Meteorologists who have special training to provide incident based weather forecasts to wildland firefighters working a wildfire. They are a national resource, IMETs will go anywhere in the United States and have been deployed internationally (see for example, my January 13th post on IMET deployments to Australia).

In the video below, you will hear IMET Jeremy Wolfe discuss what IMETs do. I have shared this video a couple of times on my blog, the most recent being on August 29, 2018.

Direct link to video on Youtube

If you want more information on what IMETs do, there is a nice news release from the National Weather Service explaining what IMETs do. I have posted this at least once before on this blog, but it is worth repeating, the NWS article on IMETs may be found here. Here is an excerpt:

Incident Meteorologists (IMETs) help keep the fire crews safe by enabling responders to plan operations taking into account one of the most variable aspects of the incident — the weather. They are NWS Forecasters who have been specially trained and certified to provide weather support at a fire location.

IMETs keep firefighters safe by interpreting weather information, assessing its effect on the fire and communicating it to fire crews. Once on-site, IMETs become key members of the incident command teams and provide continuous meteorological support for the duration of the incident.

IMETs are located in numerous NWS offices across the country. Once a large wildfire has started, an IMET is contacted and given orders to travel to the site of the fire as quickly as possible. Ken Simosko, an IMET with the NWS Bismarck Weather Forecast Office (WFO), has worked five fire incidents. “You have to be ready at a moment’s notice. I have my bag ready to go so that when I get the call, I can spend my time getting spun up on the history of the fire, its current and future situation. Usually an IMET is on scene within 24 hours to 48 hours of the initial call. This depends on the mode of travel [car or plane] and how far the IMET is from the wildland fire.”

If you want to follow IMET deployments, you might want to follow the US NWS IMET Facebook page, you do not need a Facebook account to access the content. On June 3rd, an IMET from the US National Weather Service Flagstaff Arizona Weather Forecast Office was deployed to the Sawtooth Fire that is currently burning near Superior Arizona.  As I write this, according to Inciweb the Sawtooth Fire has burned 24.729 acres and is at 42 percent containment (what you see at the link will be different depending on when you access this Inciweb information on the fire as active fire information may be updated frequently. Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today has written a couple of articles on the Sawtooth Fire, you may find them here (the link is to his tagged articles, scroll down for the first article).