Tense Thursday Fire

[SBitz]

Thank you Section Make8R for your helpful and reassuring update this morning with the last post on yesterday's Topic thread. Just watched the KEYT 11am and that coupled with what I'm seeing helped us relax a little bit. Here (101@154) I could see with zoom lens (and then on KEYT) that the helicopter I call Old Yeller (looks pretty new, but I still haven't looked it up) has switched to internal PhosChek tank. That's good because it means they don't have or anticipate gusty winds either at the Salvar Bridge ("to nowhere") or out at the West end of the fire where they're dropping. The bucket they used yesterday allowed them more safety by letting ground crew load it while they dropped down a little to put slack in the line. That gave them room to safely dance around in gusts (which was fun to watch - amazing pilots!). Anyway, I'll start gathering and posting info and you're all invited to do the same.

[SBitz]

11am GOES low-res InfraRed satellite looks good for SB (faint white squares=fire detection), not so much in Ventura County (bright white squares). This is the most often updated satellite, though the squares are quite big due to the low accuracy of the detection locations. If you're new to this site and happen to notice the file name on this image, I date them in Zulu (GMT) time as the satellite does and sometimes add typos in my haste, so I usually double check the time here in the post. :)

The one worrisome thing I see in this IR sat is how there's a bright square on the County line far North into the back country.

[SBitz]

Here's the GOES visible light sat from 11am with the brightness pumped way up to better show the smoke. This is useful for giving some idea of what winds are like over the fire area.

The plume is blowing to the Southwest over SB County and the brighter part is that spot near the SB County line. You can also get a sense of fire strength by the height of the plume, indicated by the shadow above the Northeast tips of the two main plumes. Since the sun was to the Southeast at 11am, those shadows are slightly to the top-right (Northwest) of those smoke tip plumes. That darker and slightly taller shadow on the county line plume indicates it was stronger, matching the brighter color of that plume. So this is the source of heavy smoke we're seeing overhead in SB. Reassuring that it's far away.

[Pork Rind]

Today is a crazy travel day for work for me, so I'm really going to fail at seeing the big jets roll through or otherwise watch the progress of the helicopters. I did get a glance at the air traffic this morning and saw a continuation of an interesting pattern that I can only speculate about.

From this screen grab at about 11:30 this morning, you can see that there are at least four helicopters on the back and forth plan, but the OV-10 Bronco (it has been observing and possibly making spot dumps over the last few days) is loitering over a specific area quite a bit farther inland. I saw a lot of attention here yesterday afternoon. Clearly this is not the immediate concerns for us along the coast that the Romero and Bella Vista canyon fires are, but it's something that's caught my eye...

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[SBitz]

When there's a fire like this I often wander off into cyberia (web) looking for a really good map. No luck so far, but here's one I found during a prior fire that I've modified to show today's activity. Like nearly all maps it doesn't show sources, accuracy or times (I might guess 0-12 hours for this one) for most of the data depicted but the fact this one shows road closures might be useful. I've bookmarked it in the unlikely event we decide to evacuate. Here's the link: USWAW Map.

[SBitz]

KEYT.com has a handy "Map Room" with some links, but anyone with limited net access or aversion to pop up ads and auto-play videos will want to avoid that unless they know how to turn off JavaScript in their web browser. That direct link in the prior sentence can take you past their home page. The most interesting link for me there is to the NWCG map below that they're showing on TV occasionally. It's twitchy to use, and will randomly freak out if you change settings. But if you're "nice" and only click the Layers icon and Topo button without zooming in too much it gives an idea where the fire's burning in the back country. I've managed to zoom it a little using Firefox browser zoom before the map goes away.  Here's a link if you haven't already found this map and want to avoid the KEYT site: NWCG Thomas Map

[topix]

The map I have been using all week is this one at caltopo.com .  It has some useful features:
--plot the wind (current and forecast (+3 hr, +6, +12, +18, +24, +36)), shown in green (the color used for light winds).
--give you the time stamp of the sat data if you zoom in
--let you select which sat data you want (all, with smoke, VIIRS, MODIS)
--change the topographic detail (the default is good, but I have the base layer set to MapBuilder Topo to show the road names more clearly)
--include historic fire info (you can see the burn scar outline of the Tea Fire in orange on the lefthand side of the map

[SBitz]

Update: I've started a Scanner Reports topic and will post a little info there.

If anyone has a scanner, it would be great to see some posts in that Topic.

[SBitz]

Topix wrote:

The map I have been using all week is this one at caltopo.com

Wow, thanks for posting it again and adding some detailed pointers! Wish I'd taken the time to explore this one before! Short on source details, but presuming it's accurate as seems the case maybe that doesn't matter. I see an option to Share a map so if we tweak in some settings or details we like,  we could post a link here occasionally.

[Pork Rind]

I have all the current Cal Fire and USFS frequencies programmed. I can post in a bit, but I can't monitor as I'm still in Ye Olde PNW.

On Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 1:26:42 PM UTC-8, SBitz wrote:

Update: I'm starting a Scanner topic and will post a little info there.

If anyone has a scanner, it would be great to see some posts in a new Topic here. Let me know with a reply here or a private message if you'd like me to start one. Somewhere I have a list of fire air attack frequencies reported somewhere (probably Edhat) that might still be in use. I have a portable aviation radio and no time to mess with it, but might turn it on if/when time permits and will of course post anything of interest.

[SBitz]

> I have all the current Cal Fire and USFS frequencies programmed. I can post in a bit, but I can't monitor as I'm still in Ye Olde PNW.

Thanks, PR. If you've seen any pix of our air today you can more fully enjoy being a temporary Seattlite. :)

[SBitz]

Sad moment just now when I learned that San Diego firefighter Cory Iverson has died, apparently on the fire line somewhere near Fillmore. Thanks for your service, and RIP :(

Update 4:20pm: added name provided by KEYT.

[Section Make8R]

thanx for this link, works great on my Chromebook(so far, without messing with anything but location and zoom) I like it as its just straight up fire points, with topo etc

........heavy air down here, ash falling, no wind. Earlier tody, mostly southwest and slow....my little weather reader up on the roof says NE@2 and 65% humidity.  Analogue outside reads about the same.  Ash makes it feel about 0% 

 Map below when enlarged at site shows some IR hot spots up San Ysidro. Seems like wind over at Fillmore/Piru really spiked up and restarted some hot spots there as well.   Copters ALL day long, some going to east, but it sounds like some to west or up above N towards Camino Cielo.    After dark we shall all see whats been happening all day.  

   Yeah, RIP to the Brave Person......

[SBitz]

I'm going to be offline for some hours, so here come some quick posts, starting with this latest GOES vis sat with brightness pumped up to better show smoke, thus indicating plumes and wind patterns.

[SBitz]

Broadcast Peak to East.

[SBitz]

GOES IR sat 3:30pm.

[SBitz]

Air Quality 4pm - better than it looks outside.

[SBitz]

Aviation wind forecast for surface wind looks OK through the night. This forecast for 9pm up at 3,000 shows the terrain in darker brown and the light brown indicates wind less than 18mph at the surface (including on mountain slopes below 3,000' above sea level). So SB County looks OK (SB at about the tiny red dot in the middle) but the blue (darker=stronger) over Ventura County could be trouble for firefighters in the back country.

[Section Make8R]

  My 3 cents:  fire has burned down into I believe the Buena Vista Canyon drainage, sort of a small box canyon.  Most of the smoke here today I have heard was from the flare up back up in Fillmore, 40mph gusts up there.  No winds down here today, except for  the upslope winds the fire seems to draw in.  This happened in the tea garden fire, with 60mph east gusts in the fire zone, but moist SE flow down in the flats.  Some sort of goodness.    At 10:00pm only 3 smallish fire areas, up on the Beuna Vista ridge area, 1mph N/NW wind.  Lets hope it stays this way.

Heres one of favorite NOAA links, water vapor blue, dry air brown.  You can see the high pressure motion over the western US.  Lets hope this thing breaks down bit by bit.

 Link is for animation.  Holy Moly I think I did link correctly!!!! Jeez!

Learnted sumfin!

 and here is the  full screen version at NOAA