The weather plays a significant role in how a wildfire grows, how fast it spreads, and how dangerous it can become for firefighters, but few tools exist to help fire managers anticipate days when weather conditions will have the greatest potential to make wildfire erratic or especially dangerous. The USDA Forest Service is expanding the options with the Hot-Dry-Windy Index(HDW), a new fire-weather prediction tool based on the key atmospheric variables that affect wildland fire: temperature, moisture, and wind.
The weather plays a significant role in how a wildfire grows, how fast it spreads, and how dangerous it can become for firefighters, but few tools exist to help fire managers anticipate days when weather conditions will have the greatest potential to make wildfire erratic or especially dangerous. The USDA Forest Service is expanding the options with the Hot-Dry-Windy Index(HDW), a new fire-weather prediction tool based on the key atmospheric variables that affect wildland fire: temperature, moisture, and wind.
“Predicting fire conditions is important and extremely difficult,” said Joseph Charney, a research meteorologist with the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Lansing, Mich., and a member of the research team behind HDW. “By focusing on just temperature, moisture and wind, we created a tool that works with the same weather models that are used every day in fire weather forecasts, and thus can be applied anywhere in the world, regardless of fuel conditions or topography.”
Read more at USDA Forest Service - Northern Research Station
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