Alert: SB/Carp/SY Fire Potential Wed-Thurs

[SBitz]

I don't want to be Chicken Little, but there seems to be a strong potential for fast moving fire in the Santa Ynez and San Rafael Mountains tonight. There's an early warning about it on Noozhawk here that I hadn't noticed until just now. I went looking for local mention of it when checking out the aviation wind forecast. I'll start posting info in this Topic on SBitZ.Net in a few minutes as I collect it.

In essence, winds at the 6,000' foot level in our mountains are predicted to reach 50-60mph from the East tonight. That means a single ember from the fires at the edge of the Santa Barbara County line could start jumping to the West and get ahead of fire control efforts. There's been a steady stream of aerial attack aircraft and helicopters going at the fire near Ojai and if anything it had picked up as of an hour ago. I haven't seen any such efforts where the fire is nearing Rincon, but winds at that lower level aren't predicted to get as bad.

We're starting to pack for evacuation here (101@154), and I strongly suggest everyone from Carp and Ojai to the West including Santa Ynez Valley be prepared and stay alert all night tonight. Certainly no need to panic or leave home at the moment, but we don't want to be caught off guard tonight. Wind predictions are for mild down-slope breezes tonight in SB rather than the protective mild onshore flow we've had during recent major fires here.

OK, I'm off to post some alert comments on Edhat and then start posting details here...

[SBitz]

OK, first off here are screencaps of the aviation wind forecast as of 3pm, for winds at the 6,000 foot level starting at 6pm tonight. Usually these are pretty accurate this close to the forecast time.

This is the forecast for 6,000 feet above sea level at 0200zulu (GMT) which is 6pm tonight. The wind picks up quickly after that with the stonger wind areas progressing to the West. I've put a red dot about where downtown SB is. The light blue indicates wind from 15 up to 20 knots and of course the arrow lines indicate direction. Here's the color legend for wind speed where I've added lines for 30 and 50 knots with their mph equivalents.


Here's the forecast for 0700zulu (11pm), it's like this basically all night with this currently being the worst time period for strength and spread into SB County.

[SBitz]

Now if you're like me, you're curious what the winds are like in our "front range" (SY Mtns) that are lower than 6k'. Here's the 0700z forecast for 3,000'.

As you may have guessed, the brown areas are mountains that go above 3k' near where the fire's currently burning (I'll post IR sat images next). First tho, here's the 0700z forecast for Surface winds (no brown, since it's the surface of mountains clear down to the water).

So again, no cause for panic in the streets. But certainly I want to be prepared and alert tonight. So since I'll be watching closely, I plan to post updates in this Topic until satisfied that it's safe to sleep.

[SBitz]

OK, here's the IR sat at 4:30pm showing the fire (two main fronts-rincon and Ojai) far cooler than earlier. Good sign.

The front range all but disappeared behind smoke at sunset. Bad sign. Now I'll look for other indicators...

[SBitz]

Came across another news item cautioning about potential for fire spread into SB County here.

[SBitz]

Good news: the wind forecasts were updated and the forecast looks better. Mountain winds are now expected to be less and slightly more toward the coast. Surface winds for 1pm are the "worst" and they're similarly more favorable too:

This could still be problematic in Ventura County and in the Rincon evac zone, but Carp and beyond to the West are low risk. Winds are forecast to die down about midnight and then pick up again mid-morning. Looking up more stuff now...

[SBitz]

Fire still looks pretty active in the Ojai/Santa Paula area in this view from Broadcast Peak with lights of SB/
Montecito at the bottom-right. Don't know what the dark plume to the right of the glowing one at left is about. Maybe smoke blowing up over the mountain and then back down over us? No plume and not much glow from the Carp area, which is a Good Sign.

[SBitz]

Here's the latest composite info. The small red dots are the hi-res IR satellite and the most recent (5:30pm).

[SBitz]

Forgot to put the image in before posting that, so I edited to add it. :}
I see there's one fire detection out in the channel, so either an error of some sort or maybe a methane vent burning on one of the platforms?

[SBitz]

Winds currently reporting calm in Carp and at KIZA (SY Airport), but that dark cloud in the prior view from Broadcast Peak is now lit so it may be a flare up in the hills above La Conchita. With the plume not sticking up now, maybe it's a bunch of small flare ups rather than a major fire run.

[SBitz]

For anyone with limited internet, here's a snipped copy of the CalFire map (link here if your net's fast). It shows rough fire perimeter outline, evac zones, and shelter locations with a little more info on the linked and zoomable map.

[SBitz]

Whatever ridge that is with the newly lit smoke, it looks like the fire's about to reach the peak in this view from our mountain (BC Pk).

Bright spots in the smoke right at the ridge line (center).

InciWeb (link) has good info on the fire, though it hasn't been updated since at least 5pm. Good news is they've posted a containment date. Bad news: Christmas Eve.

Estimated Containment Date	Sunday December 24th, 2017 approx. 09:00 PM
Fuels Involved	Chaparral and brush
Significant Events	Extreme fire behavior with rapid rates of spread and long range spotting when pushed by the winds. On the northeast side, the fire is established on the north and east side of Hwy 150 and is on the west side of Hwy 30. Fire continued to make significant runs overnight, pushing northwest of Ventura and has reached Hwy 101.

Planned Actions	Continue structure and infrastructure defense with perimeter control. Direct hand line construction where possible.
Projected Incident Activity	Fire will continue to threaten the cities of Ventura, Ojai, Santa Paula, Casitas Springs and unincorporated areas of Ventura County and spread to the west toward the city of Ojai and continue to move to the southeast into the City of Ventura. With continued forecast for northeast winds and low humidities, fire will continue to spread with high winds.

Weather Concerns	Wednesday, the Santa Ana winds will be weaker with northeast wind gusts between 20 and 30 mph, however, dry conditions will continue with relative humidity in the single digits and low teens.

[DW]

Hi!  On the Edhat comment thread you mentioned that you wanted to look up the power line routes for Santa Barbara.  Here's how to see them.  Go to the SCE DERiM web site here, and click on the map icon to open the web app.  On the left side select Content to get a list of checkboxes.  Uncheck everything except Substations and Transmission Circuits.  That yields this unsettling picture:

in which you can see that both the primary and secondary lines for Santa Barbara pass right through the fire area.  There is no connection from Santa Barbara to the north.  Just FYI...

[SBitz]

This is a great map of the SCE lines! Here's a direct link and below is a larger screencap.

If the power goes out I'll try to make up a closeup version of the fire area superimposed on this map.

[SBitz]

While I was preparing an evac list (yes, I like to be over-prepared :) text alerts started going out about a voluntary evac warning (link) in Carp and I found details on InciWeb. Here's the info, posted at 8:30pm:

Effective immediately the following areas are in a Voluntary Evacuation (Warning):

• All areas from the 5500 block of Casitas Pass Rd. (Hwy 192) east to the county line to include Lillingston Canyon and Cate Mesa, and all addresses north to the county line.

• All addresses along the east side of Bailard Ave. from Hwy 101.

• All areas south of Hwy 101 to the coast and east of Dump Rd, to include

  all of the Bates Road and Rincon areas.

  For those evacuating the rural areas along Highway 150, please use Highway 150 to Highway 192 to avoid the Highway 101 area due to congestion.

They also posted a map (link) where they're calling it the "Casitas" evac area. Here's a small copy of that area on the map:

[SBitz]

I'm glad the wind so far doesn't seem to be bad as forecast, but...

Now that the moon is high, the view from BC Pk shows color. As you can see, Montecito/SB has all but disappeared in the smoke that was supposed to be blowing offshore by now. There's also smoke creeping into SY Valley at the left edge of the pic. Smoke means embers, so I'm going to be watching more closely in an hour when wind was supposed to be strongest. Meanwhile, I notice the power's starting to flicker here 101@154 so I'll check if there are outages already...

[SBitz]

SCE site is swamped. They just show our whole region as a major outage with no details. Above the map is this text updated at 9:30pm:
- damage assessment teams are just starting to gain access to some of the fire-related areas. Customers should be prepared to be without power for at least the next few days. Your patience and understanding is appreciated.
Thomas fire along the North Coast (approximately 7,000 customers)
On their major outage page they add this - "damage assessment teams are just starting to gain access to some of the fire-related areas. Customers should be prepared to be without power for at least the next few days. Your patience and understanding is appreciated."

[SBitz]

IR sat from 9:30pm shows the fire going like gangbusters near Ojai with the fire near Carp still not as hot and looking more like dispersed smaller fires.

[SBitz]

Surface wind in the aviation forecast is much less now thru Thurs, and only of potential concern for SB County in the Rincon/Carp area. At 3,000 feet up though, it's blowing almost due West and pretty strong (40-50mph) in some areas. Hopefully that won't be a problem, since the fire plumes aren't going very high and the view from BC Pk doesn't show much smoke from Ojai making it into SY Valley. The smoke over Carp and cities to the West along the coast doesn't seem to be sparking any major spot fires so hopefully we'll be ok. I'll report back if there are any small weather stations reporting ground level winds of concern.

[SBitz]

I checked a couple of SB County weather stations and they're showing little or no wind. The "wUnderground" weather site has a handy but resource hungry feature that displays Personal Weather Stations (PWS) people have installed mostly in homes and have kindly put online for the benefit of all (link). As of 10:30 or so here's how the Carp area looks:

The numbers inside the circles are temperature, and the lines point toward the direction the wind is coming from. The strength varies from 0-5mph with detectable wind indicated by a stick (stations without wind reporting never show a stick). This is what they'd call "light and variable" wind. Not the kind that hammered Ventura.

[SBitz]

Take care of your breathing apparatus. It's pretty nasty out there, and the worst is the small particles (2.5mic.) that go deepest into your lungs and will go right through nearly all masks. Here's a shortened list of the latest SBAPCD report (link) from 11pm.

[SBitz]

Looks likely that it's flared up at the SB County line and may have jumped 101 to the beach, judging by this low-res IR sat from 11pm.

Looking massive near Ojai too. Maybe it's died down by now though judging by the view from BC Pk.

The smoke is thicker though, so it could be hiding most of the flames. Smoke over in SY Valley is thicker now too.

[SBitz]

Don't know if anyone's still wanting info in the wee hours, but I just did a final check. Here's the USFS map showing centers of the IR sat 1km square area fire detections as of 12:30am.

No specific times given on when the most recent 0-6 hour (red dots) detections were acquired, so they could've been 6:30pm. None show the fire reaching the SB County line or the beach. The low-res GOES does show time, and here's the midnight one that does show fire at the beach and at the County line but again it's low-res and could be way off.

The main thing is there's no drastic rapid movement. Also, the Ojai area has calmed quite a bit and the LA fires aren't showing so more resources may be available here tomorrow. Here's the composite map as of 1am.

Now a last look from Broadcast Peak.

The smoke has thinned enough to reveal the lights of SB and there's a hint of moonlight at the top, so unless smoke has obscured what's really going on right now things seem fairly stable for the night. At least in SB County. I didn't see any air attack when I checked about 10pm, so the good folks of Ojai and the rest of Ventura County are relying on dauntless ground crews to fight through the night.

Again, I welcome anyone to add info here though if you're not signed up you can't post until one of our volunteers (total of two so far) is online to approve your free membership. We're doing this to deter the trolls who like to stir things up. We're feeling amply stirred up by the facts and respectful dialog here. Hope everyone has a safe and restful night and that we wake to better conditions.

[SBitz]

Here are some 1km resolution IR sat fire detections as of about 11:45am Thurs. First a wide area showing how there are a few spots nearing Fillmore.

Next a zoomed in version for a little more detail, especially on the SB County line. Looks like it's spotting along the ridge.

Last in this post a different interpretation of the IR detections showing their relative heat (Fire Radiative Power). Forgot to include the legend for this one but purple is coolest up thru blue, green, yellow, orange with red the hottest. So the Ojai area is still seeing the worst of it, and that's borne out by the 1 hour low-res GOES sat I'll post next (again, this 1km stuff isn't specified beyond 0-6 hours).

[SBitz]

The SB airport is currently reporting 1.5 mile visibility due to the thick smoke. Here's the low-res IR sat from 11:30am, showing the LA fires cool still and thus hopefully allowing more resources on our Thomas Fire.

Regarding the SBA smoke report, here's the SBAPCD AQI. Note that the stations not reporting small particles (esp. 2.5micron) doesn't mean those areas aren't dangerous. Also remember that no surgical mask will catch any of those particles. They pass freely through all but the most expensive ($100 and up) filters, and you also need eye protection. Luckily most of the smoke now is wildfire rather than urban where toxi chemicals are a life threatening addition to the smoke.

[SBitz]

Speaking of smoke, here's the visible sat from 11:30am, showing how impacted the islands are with Santa Rosa getting the worst though hopefully it's not too bad at ground level out there.

The wider smoke near term forecast looks like this, sharing our AQI woes up the coast.

[SBitz]

Broadcast Peak looking East is nostalgic. Remember when skies were bright blue with just a few artistic brush strokes of high ice cloud?

The smoke plume over Ojai area isn't tall, so that's a good sign in terms of fire intensity. The smoke has obliterated SB. The white at top-right is due to overexposure from the sun. I don't like seeing smoke thicker down the North side of the ridge into Santa Ynez Valley but at least the wind there is mostly calm or up-slope.

[Section Make8R]

hey thank you for posting these images, I bookmarked the sites to use.  Im down at 101 and San Ysidro st. and air quality is really poor here. No wind, cool and 50% humiidty.

  Good site you may already know about is https://www.WeatherWest.com, mostly for the weather guys who post images and analysis in the comments section and the blog owner, Daniel Swain from UCLA....Great place.  ok thanx again.   

[SBitz]

Thanks for posting.  I'll check out that link, but please do post updates you find there and more on the spot reports if you have time.  Nothing like eyes on for the latest. :)

[SBitz]

That spotter plane seems to have left the Los Alamos area, so they've probably gotten a handle on that now.  I've been seeing at least three helicopters on the Thomas Fire, including one surveying the fire near Carp.  A turboprop fire plane flew in from CO but didn't seem to circle, and I'm thinking it might be an IR spotter that can detect hotspots thru the thick smoke. If so, it would at least help ground crews knock down spot fires more quickly including at night but it might finally enable the fixed wing planes to drop some PhosChek.

The sky over SB is a tiny bit brighter at the moment, but the Ojai area plume popped up some a while ago and is still hotter on the latest low-res IR sat. along with two new SoCA fires.

You can see the Ojai plume on the BC Pk view too, along with thicker smoke spilling into the eastern end of SY Valley.

[SBitz]

I'd assumed the airlines were avoiding SBA, but not according to the airport website. They're flying instrument approaches on runway 7 in 1.5 mile visibility below 2,000' (not ideal flying weather, as you can imagine).

[Section Make8R]

yeah no worries....cant see much down here. New fire out in Fallbrook...heres a quick cam link.   Im still learning chrome/google and navigating "high tech" sites in general, so apologies for future or current errors)

.http://www.alertwildfire.org/sdge/

[SBitz]

still learning chrome/google and navigating "high tech" sites

 

I'm just happy to be seeing more "hands to the pump" sharing stuff here. :)

One thing that's made it more time consuming for me is downsizing image files so that those with only smartphone or slow internet access can view them.  Seems to me that's a unique way we can help, since many (most?) of the sites I peruse for info take a long time and lots of data to load.  In just a couple of hours when Cox was down I burned thru .5GB of data on my cell plan.  Needless to say I'm hoping Cox stays up for the remainder of this fire/smoke event.

Speaking of smoke, SY Valley is getting it from the West now too.  I checked a while ago and IZA (SY airport) reported wind 230 (SW) at 14kt, and the view West from BC Pk shows the smoke pretty thick out toward Lompoc.  2pm AQI only shows Ozone for SY, at 47 which is worse than Lompoc which reports:

Location

Ozone

PM10

PM2.5

Lompoc H St

Good (32)

Moderate (62)

Moderate (94)

[SBitz]

Here are the 2:30pm IR and Vis sat views from GOES. The other SoCA fires hadn't grown much and smoke from the fire in TJ area isn't affecting us.

[SBitz]

Here's the composite map as of 3pm, again tweaked to reduce file size and pump up color to better show the yellow fire perimeter outline.

[SBitz]

Smoke is thickening and converging from East and West in this latest view to the North from BC Pk.

[Section Make8R]

Ok sidetrack.

I tossed away all my Microsoft garbage, and any computers that used their stuff.....spent $300  for an HP Chromebook,and am as happy as can be. Its a bit too large for pocket use, and cant make phone calls, but I dont care. And they can track my purchasing all they want.   The ease of use, no updating....basically just WIFI.  It has very little working memory, so some of the hi rez sites cause troubles. I have to fumble through site controls and overlays etc, but hey thats how one learns.

Seeing as how I cant hack into the Euro computer models..(ha) I have to rely on people like yourself to steer me along.  So THANK YOU!! 

And yeah, until they get those unfurlling butterfly screens, or an implanted chip for me to see the teeny screens, Im going to stick to laptop or maybe notebook size.  Smartphones are too teeny.  I still use fold out maps to navigate roads etc.  (yeah I know, Im kinda old school)  but when Siri chokes up under a bridge and reverts to spanish. etc etc....Pretty funny, yeah lost again, well,l ets check the map then

Ok keep up the good work, I will  share this link with folks interested. (weather west)

 ( I came here through Edhat btw)  

Jupe

ps hideous air down in the flats@Miramar/101

heres a shot from ISS

 https://twitter.com/AstroKomrade

[SBitz]

heres a shot from ISS

I don't have (nor want) a Twitter account so I can't see the full-size version of that lovely pic. But with some futzing I was able to capture and tweak this small version that's still quite a beautiful capture of this horrific fire.

[SBitz]

Here's today's color sat pic of the region. Don't know the time, but it was posted recently.

[SBitz]

Those color satellite views are prettier than things look from here on the ground, or even up at BC Pk. The smoke is getting pretty thick over SY Valley by the look of this view to the North.

With light fading, I've brightened these pix and popped the color up a little. Here's how it looks to the East.

The plume still isn't super tall but it seems wider now.

[SBitz]

HMS Smoke Analysis from 2321z (3:21pm local) shows we're not alone in having red pimpled satellite fire detections. We have the main source of smoke for now though.

[SBitz]

Here's the 4pm low-res IR sat. Looking calmer.

[SBitz]

InciWeb did a partial update to their Thomas info an hour ago with this paragraph added (older stuff  starting w/Basic Info included below it):
Community Meeting:

Cal Fire Incident Management Team 4, will conduct a community meeting in the cafetorium of Carpinteria High School, 4810 Foothill Rd, Carpinteria, CA 93013. Representatives from the agencies managing the incident will provide a briefing and be available for questions at the conclusion of the meeting. The meeting will be held on Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 6:30 p.m.. Officials ask that people attending arrive early, as the meeting will begin promptly at 6:30.

ps-let me know if this info below is impossible to read, since they've posted it as a web page "Table" that might not look good in text email. -J

Basic Information

Current as of	12/7/2017, 3:45:30 PM
Incident Type	Wildfire
Date of Origin	Monday December 04th, 2017 approx. 06:30 PM
Location	Upper Ojai near Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, Ventura City to Hwy 33
Incident Commander	Unified Command: CALFIRE, Ventura County, Los Padres NF, Ventura Fire, Ventura Sheriff.

Current Situation

Total Personnel	2,509
Size	96,000 Acres
Percent of Perimeter Contained	5%
Estimated Containment Date	Sunday December 24th, 2017 approx. 09:00 PM
Fuels Involved	Chaparral and brush
Significant Events	Extreme fire behavior with rapid rates of spread and long range spotting when pushed by the winds. On the northeast side, the fire is established on the north and east side of Hwy 150 and is on the west side of Hwy 30. Fire continued to make significant runs overnight, pushing northwest of Ventura and has reached Hwy 101.

Outlook

Planned Actions	Continue structure and infrastructure defense with perimeter control. Direct hand line construction where possible.
Projected Incident Activity	Fire will continue to threaten the cities of Ventura, Ojai, Santa Paula, Casitas Springs and unincorporated areas of Ventura County and spread to the west toward the city of Ojai and continue to move to the southeast into the City of Ventura. With continued forecast for northeast winds and low humidities, fire will continue to spread with high winds.

Current Weather

Weather Concerns

Last night, Santa Ana winds began to increase across the fire with wind gusts between 20 and 35 mph. The Santa Ana winds will continue to increase today with gusts between 30 to 50 mph anticipated through early afternoon. The winds will begin to diminish tonight and Friday, but gusts between 20 and 35 mph can be expected throughout the day on Friday. Dry conditions will continue with relative humidity in the single digits. With these conditions, critical fire weather conditions and Red Flag Warnings remain in effect.

[SBitz]

SB County has announced on their fire info website that they'll be giving away more N95 smoke masks tomorrow, so they must be flying in a resupply.

(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) -- N95 masks will be distributed Friday, December 8th at the

following three locations, beginning at 10:00 am:

• Costco in the Camino Real Marketplace (7095 Market Pl Drive, Goleta)

• Franklin Community Center (1136 East Montecito Street, Santa Barbara)

• Albertson’s in Carpinteria (1018 Casitas Pass Road, Carpinteria)

  Due to limited supplies, no more than two masks are being given per person. There are no exceptions to the number of masks that will be provided per person. It is important to note that these masks do not fit children properly.

[Section Make8R]

no Twitter for me either, who can resist an Astronauts account!!!   

[Section Make8R]

No problem reading!!  Thank you for update. 

 Winds "should" swing around to west/northwest tomorrow afternoon, and start clearing some of the smoke.  (NWS report) but we will see. Humidity hovering around 50% here in the flats. NW winds but slight, better than the southwest flow from the fires.

[SBitz]

I was offline for a while and getting back on just now things had changed a bit. First off, it seemed that SBitZ.NET wasn't working! So much for my theory that perhaps the largest internet service provider in North America (the world?) would be fail-safe in a disaster. Google it seems, had a hiccup. But happily it was going like clockwork again a couple of minutes later. Did you notice the outage?

Anyway, of much more interest is what I saw next.

As the old film noir cop said to the apprehended speeding driver, "Where's the fire?" In that GOES low-res IR sat Thomas was a mere shadow of his former self at 930pm. So I went to another source where I could turn on every one of many different IR satellites and checked out FRP (the amount of heat in each detected fire) to see if there were really hot ones marching West like we've all feared.

Not so much. OK, so how about only heat detections of any intensity going back in the period from 0-6 hours?

Now keep in mind those little red dots on the SB County line are the centers of very large squares where there could've been a low-intensity spot fire of any size. Long story short, it appears our dragon is growing drowsy thanks to the tireless efforts of firefighters (esp. ground crews on the Western line). Now I'm going to check smoke and post anything I can find.

[SBitz]

The view East from Broadcast Peak shows no definite fire glow, though the moon may be overpowering a weak one. Plenty of smoke still hanging around though. Probably lots of smouldering going on that would leap happily if the wind picks up, and if it doesn't pick up it will take longer for smoke to dissipate.

The 10pm SBCPCD Air Quality Index agrees with how it looks from the peak.

[SBitz]

So what about those winds? Well, the Good News is that the 11pm aviation forecast shows things looking much like this for a while.

Cool and calm on the Western Front. But what about the wind up at 3,000 feet? Maybe not such good news.

That pesky high pressure area up by Big Sur looks like this and sometimes much stronger for a lot of the hours through Sunday. Possibly pick up an ember up in the mountains? Maybe keep blowing smoke and ash at us? Any relief up at 6,000 feet?

You have guess correctly.
So what does this mean for fire and smoke? It seems we'll find out. My own guess is that things are calming down and will continue to do so, with fire and smoke both getting better. But of course I'm an optimist. :)
Good night and good luck.