Scary Sunday Fire

[SBitz]

Looking like things could get hairy in S. SB County. Thick smoke even up in SLO County. We're packing. I'll post later if possible. Right now it's looking like Summerland and East up over the ridge are most at risk, but I'm seeing some spooky looking aviation wind forecasts so we all need to prepare. While I'm offline, you can find a lot of the info I've been posting on a site named SBC Webcams here. If you scroll down past the live cameras that don't tell you anything other than the obvious fact it's very smoky everywhere, there's some good solid info. They show extreme wind gusts up in the mountains as I feared, but don't tell the directions. In this situation with active fire up there, the directions don't matter other than telling you which way the fire's most likely to jump. I don't see any fixed wing attack on our end of the fire area, but there's a C130 that came out of Santa Maria and last I looked it stopped at Pt.Mugu NAS for reload. Several helicopters all over Ventura County end of the fire, but KETY's excellent live coverage showed at least two from Fresno County working a fire in the hills above Carp. OK, be safe and I'll try to get back online in a while...
If anyone has info, please post here and/or on Edhat.

[SBitz]

Took a last look before shutting down to do other stuff when I saw this that may not be available elsewhere. Helpful for me in getting a sense of where the fire was recently. This is the combination map of all IR sats that have detected fire in the last 0-6 hours on the West end of the fire, though even the latest may be 6 hours old. Most likely only an hour or two. They're "footprint" style again, showing the entire area in which fire was detected. So for example, if one house in a subdivision were burning these squares might cover the whole neigborhood. Not exactly precise in time or location, but here it is.

[Section Make8R]

thak you again. IR references very helpful.   101/Miramar smoke and ash but RH still holding at 50%.  Major evacs from up into Montecito, I have to do truck pickup of birds....man what a mess.

good wishes to everybody....common SEABREEZE!!

[SBitz]

Just got back online and checked the 0-6 hour IR satellite (see above IR map for description).  As of 4pm the only growth was on the North side, which I circled in white. You can compare this one with the earlier one and maybe see the difference too.

[SBitz]

Informative news conference on KEYT channel 3-1 right now, and they'll probably repeat it on their secondary channel 3-2. I heard the fire guy say they're issuing an evac for 154/192 (Foothill) to the Northeast. Precautionary if I understood correctly, so based on the IR sat and the lack of open flame showing from 154@101 you probably have some time to prepare.

[SBitz]

The SBCFD site (click here) has some info but most of it looks pretty outdated. The weather briefing at the public meeting covered on KEYT had some good info on the wind forecast they're worried about for tonight. To my frustration the guy who described the weather mentioned remote weather stations they have in the hills, but didn't mention any way we can access that crucial data. If I find anything I'll post it of course.

[SBitz]

The 3pm evac warning is from 101 North to Foothill (192) Voluntary. It's Mandatory from there up to Camino Cielo from the SB County line on the East and to just East of the 192/Mission Canyon Rd intersection. At the Salinas exit from 101 Northbound, the Voluntary line goes along Alameda Padre Serra to Mission Canyon Rd past Rocky Nook Park up to Foothill (192) then West to 154 and still ends at Camino Cielo on the North. Here's the map from the SBCFD site, downsized for email and slow or expensive net connections (smartphones, tablets, etc.).

[SBitz]

A morsel of Good News - the 30-60 minute updated GOES IR sat for 5pm shows the fire very much cooler, and no major fires anywhere in SoCA all the way from Big Sur into Northern Baja and East into NV & AZ. Here's our area.

[SBitz]

Here's the 5:30pm composite map. I didn't mention it before, but the green triangle is where they figure the fire started.

This is pretty accurate fire history, but doesn't seem to be updated nearly so often as the 30-60 minute GOES IR sat. The yellow fire perimeter isn't updated often either it seems, and I've yet to see a good source for that so if you find one please post.

[SBitz]

The 5:30pm GOES IR sat is scary good. The only fire detection (just North of Rincon) is so faint I pumped up the brightness to make sure everyone can see it.

[Mike H.]

That's good news indeed.

As a newbie, I have to say right now I'm worried about winds. This map,

https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=34.44112,-119.61203&z=12&b=hyb&a=modis_mp,wxd_wspd-01

*just now* changed from winds pointing north away from Santa Barbara, to winds pointing south/straight down.  Do you happen to know how accurate this particular map may be?  (Sorry to be ignorant; I'm completely new here, and if this was already discussed, I apologize.)

MH

[SBitz]

This 6pm aviation forecast for surface wind could be better (lines with arrows predict SSW down-slope), but at least they're not predicting anything more than 18mph and probably much less or we'd be seeing fire detections in the GOES IR. So that would mean a dry breeze rather than the moist breeze blowing up slope that's spared coastal areas from some past fires. I'll post winds aloft next, and they're not as good.

The light blue down in the San Diego area at the Mexico border predicts wind from 18mph up to 24mph or so.

[SBitz]

Here's the 6pm aviation wind forecast for 3,000 feet altitude. Still better than it's been here in SB County at many times during this marathon fire. The bad news here is that it's due West, and the earlier burning was in the Santa Ynez watershed. Luckily for the towns in that direction a lot of the brush has burned in recent fires, but a strong rain later will run amok on the watershed.

You can see from this why people up the coast are complaining about us sending them our smoke. The strongest wind forecast (18-24mph) is due West over Ventura area and then bending a tad South over the islands. Next up the 6,000 foot forecast.

[SBitz]

So up at 6,000 feet right now, the aviation forecast predicts that it's blowing pretty hard (24 to 36mph) to the West. Most of our peaks are below that, but it indicates the potential for gusts where that wind dips down over terrain. Also shows yet again why the big fixed wing air tankers haven't been able to attack the fire in our area. I'd guess they're very itchy to do so! They've instead gone after the Northeastern hotspots and apparently knocked them all down working with the exhausted ground crews.

[SBitz]

Thanks for the CalTopo link, Mike. Looks like it's much easier for most people to understand at a glance. What I'd more like to see is every one of the small weather stations out there, especially the ones put up by the fire departments. Those could tell me exactly what's happening on the slopes near where the fire is. I'll probably spelunk the web in a while looking for those. Meanwhile I personally prefer the aviation wind forecasts because they've been reliable for my flying and show layers of what the wind's doing. When I have more time to explore CalTopo maybe I'll find some tricks to get what I seek. Meanwhile, here's a 6:34pm screencap of that site in case it's helpful for those w/o good net access at the moment.

Something I like about this map is that it seems to show some of the fire detection times for that blizzard of orange and red at upper-right. Thanks again for sharing!

[DS]

Thank you SO much for all of this. How do tonight's forecasted winds compare to last night's winds?

[Mike H.]

On Sun, 10 Dec 2017 18:41:03 -0800 (PST), SBitz wrote:

> Something I like about this map is that it seems to show some of the fire 

detection times for that blizzard of orange and red at upper-right. Thanks 

again for sharing!

You're definitely welcome!  I *think* I came across this in my twitter feed yesterday, but am no longer sure who posted it or else I'd give proper attribution....

Thanks for your continuous updates and info too.

MH

[SBitz]

Kinda similar as I recall. You'd need to go back over those posts to know. Big difference tonight is how much the active fire area moved West today. For an overview of what's going on up in the air making this mess, maybe this will help. It's the 10pm aviation wind forecast for 9,000 feet up. It shows how a monster high pressure area (clockwise circulation of wind) is meshed like a gear with a more normal sized low pressure area (counter-clockwise wind). They meet right over our heads. They're moving much more slowly to the East than normal weather does here. Up in the jet stream it's even crazier. The result of that meeting of giant winds over our heads translates to the freak fire weather down here. The pattern is much the same right now and has been for days, but the 10pm graphic shows it more clearly. I've added the white arrows in case anyone can't make out the little black ones on all the black wind direction lines. Colors indicate wind speed, from 18mph (light blue) up to 120mph or so. It's fuzzy due to keeping the file size down for those with limited internet.

[SBitz]

Notice also that those winds are both coming from out over the desert areas, so the air they're transporting tends to be dry. Fast dry winds are not friendly to firefighters. The turbulence they create over mountainous terrain is problematic for pilots.

[SBitz]

We managed to score N95 masks at Costco today before they ran out of all but the Small Adult size. The main SB Library had them after that, but very few. Air quality isn't horrible at the moment, but we're holed up in the closed up house again watching the mountains. Here's the 7pm AQI.

[SBitz]

Great news! The 7pm GOES low-res IR sat is out, and it's cool. Literally. I cranked the brightness way up on this and no fire detection shows at all!

Let's hope it stays like this.

[Pork Rind]

That's strange. Right before I stepped out to find breakfast supplies for my AirBnB, KEYT was showing a ridge line on fire visible from Cravens Lane near Toro Canyon. And other burning areas a little farther east on 192 wherever the 'Stache was.

[SBitz]

Yes PR, the GEOS sat is picking it up at 9pm too as shown here. Relatively small still, but possibly growing.

Two main areas, one as you described and the other over in the Jameson Lake area. I checked all IR sats (below), and two were showing any detections in SB County in the last 6 hours but only GOES (low-res with big squares) had reported it yet. For some reason it showed some 6-12 hour old detections too (brighter red), so I left them in for reference.

[Pork Rind]

Thanks!

[SBitz]

I posted about it earlier but what with head cold and sleep dep, put it in yesterday's Topic here. You could compare that 8:30 GOES with the 9pm above to get a sense of what's up.

[SBitz]

A few items (Updated 12/11 12:50pm):
*The official NIOSH N95 masks get their name from stopping 95% of particles 0.3 microns and larger. Note that the AQI numbers from SBCAPCD quote 2.5 micron particles. A reader kindly pointed out that I'd previously stated they filter down to 3.0 microns. Moral of that story: mind your decimals. :)

*How do you know when a mask needs replacing? Basically if it gets hard to breathe through them or you start to smell smoke it's time to get another one. I think they go quite a while if you're not exerting in dense smoke. They're trapping the particles so of course when enough are trapped it's done.

*I checked distances on the detailed map I posted at 9:48, and the Jameson fire's about 15 miles from 154.

*Wind is the whole deal tonight, and I haven't yet gone searching in earnest for the fire department's remote "PWS" sensors. Even the aviation wind forecast I've been favoring doesn't give detail like specific real-time wind direction and speed, temperature, relative humidity and other factors that most affect fire spread. In essence we're getting a vague notion of what's going on, with 30-60 minute delay.  Some day the full live data collected by everyone will be readily available online and distributed with AI enhancement & interpretation. I'd like that more than a scary Armageddon mass evac warning in the wee hours. ;)

OK, onward...

[SBitz]

The BC Pk night b/w camera looking East is picking up what's probably the Jameson flare up lower-left, judging by the smoke plume direction to the left (northerly). I've pumped the brightness up some for better viewing. The other diffused glow is probably Ventura and beyond plus maybe some moon glow. SB lights are fairly attenuated by the smoke.  Remember when we could see stars from down there?

[SBitz]

ps-those lights along the ridge are probably crews cutting fire lines.

[SBitz]

Here's the 10pm low-res GOES IR sat fire detection. Looks like the one above Carp is brighter and maybe a little further West but I haven't compared it directly with the 9pm posted earlier.

The only weather stations (PWS) I've found near the fires in SB County are in Carp. I so appreciate the kind people who have weather stations in their homes and generously choose to share the data online! So valuable for fire monitoring. This one on Foothill isn't showing anything over 1mph but it could be malfunctioning because mechanical wind anemometers can be finicky.

Here's the 12/11 history for that station.

Nearby at El Carro Park is another PWS that does show wind. Note that the stick points toward the wind, and that other stations a few blocks apart 4 miles away in Montecito Village are pointing in opposite directions. The very definition of "light and variable winds." I haven't found anything on the ridge or near Jameson (blue shape top-right).

Here's the history for that station, which clearly has a fully functional anemometer.

[SBitz]

Hotspots are a little bigger and brighter in the 10:30pm GOES IR sat image. :(

In the 11:20pm BC Pk night camera view to the East you can see the light, apparently from both flare ups. It's good news that the smoke is pooling above the fire rather than streaking off in one direction.

[SBitz]

Just heard a fire type helicopter so I went outside to look, hoping it's one of those equipped with night vision and/or heat detection. Alas it seemed to pass through from West to East along the hills at maybe 5,000 feet. Maybe going to or returning from another fire, or a military helicopter going home from practice at one of the bases to the North. :(

[SBitz]

Here's the map with all 0-6 hour old IR sat fire detections as of midnight. The only one showing recent detections is GOES, so I guess the others aren't staffed at night and thus not posting detections from their satellites. Again, these squares are the whole area within which a fire can be to show up as detected within that square. These squares are 4km (about 2.5 miles) to a side. Looks like Montecito and Carp both face some risk tonight, but surface wind still seems to be calm so it's much less likely any structures will be lost.

Here's how it looks on the 11:30pm low-res GOES sat.

Here's the 12:27am b/w night camera view East from BC Pk, brightened a fair amount since the fire's quite bright and pumped up like this you can better make out the smoke. The city lights are brighter than an hour ago, probably because the smoke seems to be slowly moving off northward.

Here's the midnight aviation wind forecast at the surface over our area. It starts getting more organized to the SW in an hour or two and then goes more random again about 10am with an eddy that goes along the shoreline out past Point Conception then loops back around the islands to Point Mugu.

Here's how it looks at 3,000 feet. It shifts a little more toward the North and dies down to 18mph or less about 2am.

This is 6,000 feet. It starts to dwindle about sunrise and dies down a lot around noon.

[SBitz]

I'm going to log out and saw some logs (sleep, perchance to dream of blue skies). If you're awake and signed up here, please post any news you discover. Here's to a safe night for everyone, especially those working long and dangerous shifts on our behalf.