Ice Capping? Column Collapse?

[firefish]

Reno-met- If I remember right, there was no actual weather the following night as had been previously predicted. I was worried because I was in the middle of reroofing my house when I got assigned to the Old Fire. The 48 hour called for wet weather Fri-Sat, the actual weather happened on Thursday, the 72 hour called for a dry front. As far as the weather went, it was early for area. I live up in Big Bear just east of there and snow before Holloween is about a once every 10 years deal. Since I work on the edge of the desert but live in the mountains, I handled the cold weather alright, but I felt really bad for the type 3 strike team from Ventura County. They wanted to chain up to get to breakfast that morning. Most of the folks up top decided to take the long way down through the hi-desert instead of hockey pucking down hiway 18 into Berdoo.

[abercrombie]

from yesterday, overlooked posting it here:

MikeF;

I thought the objective of the Canadian Boreal Fire studies was to determine the effects of large fire emissions on global warming. Have they published anything yet and did it include information of more immediate fire fighter interest? If not, could any of their data be used in a fashion that we are now discussing?

The movement of air inside the cloak of smoke is what we need.

BTW:
I would not say that all fire columns collapse. We don't have that knowledge. It could well be that the mechanics are not there every time or that not all collapses make it to the ground. The physical nature of a pyro-cumulous is different enough, (temps; solar heated earth surface verses approaching 2000 degrees F and also particulates of size), where there may well be substantial air movement differentials.
I suspect that there are columns that generate so much energy that they just blow out the top and are swept away by the upper atmosphere. (The Yellowstone links you just posted etc.)
Possibly no collapse. But I don't know that. No science to back that suggestion.

We would need to do the studies of air movement inside that W. Riggles is proposing.

Fuels guy

[NMAirBear]

Fuels Guy:

And everybody else. I greatly appreciate all of your inputs. This is still a very healthy discussion. Let's keep it going.

The way we who study fire behavior science used to look at all of this is if the power of the fire exceeds the power of the wind you will have a plume dominated fire. Now this is seemingly just a semantics game because of fuzzy supporting science.

I absolutely agree that this needs to be scientifically studied much more.

I figured that out the common sense side of this in the 80's after being a division supervisor, etc, on many large fires from coast to coast. Now I just call them fuels dominated fires as opposed to wind driven fires.

Yes I was in Yellowstone, and running for my life. I was the last person in line with about a hundred folks in front of me. Our entire diivision's worth of gear got burned. Nobody got hurt.

BTW: Columns do not always collapse and that is very evident here in AZ/NM/WTX where we tend much more to have wind-driven fires.

Everybody be safe. Tough times ahead in SoCal.

Tim

[mikef]

Fuels Guy,

You are right about NASA's overall objectives for the Canadian campaign. But their scope
included our team's (Brian Stocks and I) contribution which was to connect fire behavior
to the emissions. Post-campaign analysis is still in progress; we are assembling info on the
fires, fuels, and pyroconvection for the others on the campaign to associate with their measurements.
The data will become public within the next year. Publications are just now starting to get into
peer-review stage. There will be a big session at the American Geophysical Union's Fall 2009
meeting on this campaign's first results.

I like "cloak of smoke" and agree with your assessment.

Perhaps a fire equivalent of tornado storm-chasing is a good model for this proposed experiment.
Even if seeding the fuel bed with foil tracers can't be done, having a dense network of eyes, ears,
video cameras, IR cameras, mobile radars, other strategic instruments, and aircraft in scramble
mode would work.
It would be ideal to follow a candidate fire's entire diurnal cycle this way.

mikef

[NMAirBear]

MikeF:

Thank you for being a major and very smart contributor to this thread.

As somebody who has "been there, done that" putting any aircraft into a fire plume or even close to it is not a good idea. Pix from a distance yes.

Where are you, Killer? Your turn now.

Tim

[abercrombie]

Fuels Guy, Tim Stubbs, William Riggles, mikef, & All,

Great discussion on extreme fire behavior. Attached is a proposal I will be submitting to the F & AM Steering
Committee this winter. I would be interested to hear your opinions on it.
RPD.doc (43 K, 5 page doc file)

Tim Lynch

RPD = Recognition Primed Decision-making

[mikef]

Tim,

Thanks for inviting me to offer opinions.

I don't presume to know enough to offer anything substantial, but it sure looks like a strong, strategic initiative.

One thing I noticed though that might need correction is in the 3rd paragraph.
Should it be "...incorrectly identified..." instead of "...correctly identified..." ?
There are a couple of duplicated paragraphs in the lsat two sections.

mikef

[mikef]

OK, hot off the presses, two more events y'all requested.

Note: these GOES loops can be memory hogs so if your machine bogs down,
limit the number of simultaneous ones running.

1. Esperanza
Wikipedia tells me the fire was started about 1 am PDT. The loops
start a few hrs before ignition. Notice in the *ch2* loop that the first
hot spot shows up ~8 UTC, which is within an hour of ignition. That
tells me that even a blunt instrument such as GOES, 22000 miles up,
can be a very strategic and sensitive tool.
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/proj...06/visloop.asp
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/proj...06/ch2loop.asp
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/proj...06/ch4loop.asp
Note no strong pyroconvection, but a lot of smoke and apparent wind shifts.
Anyone see anything noteworthy here?

2. Tower (25 August 1996)
Note that there is a GOES imagery gap after about 4 UTC on 26 Aug.
Like the reports given by others on this thread, it blows up big time
with convective towers relatively vertical compared to most other pyroCbs.
There are actually two fires in a north-south tandem that blow up. Are these both called Tower, or two different names?
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/proj...96/ch2loop.asp
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/proj...96/ch4loop.asp
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/proj...96/visloop.asp
This blowup did loft smoke into the uppermost troposphere (~12 km).

mikef

[NMAirBear]

All,

I just got off the phone with Tim Lynch regarding his paper. He is completeley right on with his dissertation regarding Recognition Primed Decision-making (RPD) and I made him well aware of that. RIGHT ON, TIM!!!

This thinking is akin to what Doug Campbell has for years been referring to as recognizing the "fire signature".

There needs to be a higher level movement in wildland fire management to stress the importance of experience as opposed to the importance of training. This is not the Boy Scouts where you earn merit badges....this is real life with actual lives at stake if folks do not use RPD. I have long had that attitude with regard to how, for instance, S490/S590 Fire Behavior courses are presented.

Tim Stubbs
Fire Behavior Analyst/Air Tactical Group Supervisor

[William Riggles]

RE: Recognition Primed Decision-making and extreme fire behavior by Tim Lynch:

This is the fork in the trail we need to take. It's very well written, good job!

I've always related field observations to the "Weather Rock". You can get all the wind direction and temps you want in the briefing, but observations in the field should be part of your situation awareness. Spot weather RH and temp is invaluable as are the major changes affecting your weather, but current observations are key to tuning into your gut feelings.

The best decision making comes from the gut! You combine your past experience to make a decision on what you expect. You also bring up discussion among the people who do the work. Absolutely! Test your theory with others and consider their feedback then formulate a plan everybody understands. Right there you briefed your people on what's going on and solidified you plan.

As a supervisor you may be inundated with logistics, while your crew is taking it all in. Ahhh, the Weather Rock! Observing the intensity of burning material, watching the direction of smoke movements, feeling a still in the air, hearing a crackle where there shouldn't be. Situation Awareness.

It's hard to say sometimes if you are Situationally Aware!

A "Just Culture" is finding its way into medicine and aviation. It's about watching each others back with out fear of stepping on toes. We get into routines and when things no longer seem routine, somebody should ask why the change.

Finally, the indicators, that give away the situation you are in, need to be identified if you are ever going to build a database of experience. Get everybody together and predict how the fire is going to behave AND tell why. It's kind of a game for fun! Who's right?

Does the air feel heavy? Does fire want to vent upwards? If it does will it break through and inversion and vent? Where is the smoke going? What intensity is fire around you burning? Is it picking up or dying down? Does it want to carry in grass / pine needles / heavy fuel? What has been the daily pattern in the weather and what do you expect from the burning period or night? Where do you expect to fire to end up at by the afternoon? Does it seem suspicious that everything seems so calm?

We used to try predict how a burning snag would go down! Playing out these questions as a group is the best way for everybody to build experience.

****************************
From: Lt. General Harold G. Moore
"Leadership in War and Peace"

Always trust in your instincts. Instincts and intuition give one an immediate estimate of a situation. Your instincts are the product of your training, reading, personality and experience. If my head tells me one thing and my gut tells me something else, I always go with my gut.
&
Everything in leadership boils down to judgment; the key-defining characteristic of a leader. Judgment reveals the poor leaders, the good leaders and the superb leaders. A person can possess a high IQ but still lack judgment. Intelligence does not always equal wisdom.
&
Every person in an organization is as important and necessary to a mission as the next person. That goes from the top to the bottom. The rifleman private down in the ranks was just as vital as I was in getting a job done.
&
Always remember to never deprive a person of their self-respect.
&
To do well in any field of endeavor, you have to work for good people.
&
Strive to have one or two people under you who are totally trustworthy - who will be honest with you when you are going off track on an issue or situation. The essence of loyalty is for an underling to tell his boss, “I don’t think you ought to do this and here is why.”
****************************

William Riggles