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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Weather-- hot and dry

It is going to be very hot and dry in California, the Great Basin, and western Colorado over the next couple of days. In California the temperatures have been approaching record highs. In the northern Sacramento valley today the highs will be 111-116 with the relative humidity at 7-12%. Red flag warnings are in effect for northern California, and sections of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho for high temperatures and very low humdities.

More fires than average?

At times it might seem like there have been an unusually high number of fires so far this year. The news is full of the fires in California, and smoke from the state has drifted east all the way to the Mississippi river. But other than Texas, Florida, and to an extent, North Carolina, Arizona and New Mexico, the rest of the country has been relatively quiet, fire wise. Much of the northwest, the Rockies, and northern Rockies had a wet winter and spring and are still green.

Nationally, to date there have been 46,367 fires which have burned 2,902,639 acres. The acres burned is actually below the 5-year average to date, which is 3,075,833. The 10-year average is 2,353,507. The number of fires to date is close to the 5- and 10-year averages.


Fire Summary (Five Day Trend) (courtesy of National Park Service)


Date

Wed

Thu

Mon

Tue

Wed

Day

7/2

7/3

7/7

7/8

7/9

Initial Attack Fires

282

335

223

274

161

New Large Fires

6

6

1

2

3

Large Fires Contained

5

5

3

3

1

Uncontained Large Fires

85

90

70

67

68



National Resource Commitments (Five Day Trend)

Date

Wed

Thu

Mon

Tue

Wed

Day

7/2

7/3

7/7

7/8

7/9

Area Command Teams

2

2

3

3

3

NIMO Teams

2

2

2

4

4

Type 1 Teams

15

15

14

14

15

Type 2 Teams

18

16

13

12

11

FUM Teams

0

1

1

1

1



Weather map, courtesy of Accuweather

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