VISIT: Meteorological Interpretation Blog

(Courtesy NASA/MODIS/TERRA - July 26, 2008)

Currently, California has 26 fire incidents…mostly across the northern half of the state.  Fourteen of these fires are considered large at the moment (= or > 100 acres…see following map).

To date (this fire season - through July 30, 2008), over 750,000 acres of California have burned. Most of the current fires started as a result of lightning strikes between June 20th and June 28th…with a couple of them going back to the last week in May!  Several thousand firefighters from across the country have been deployed to the region over the last couple of months, with additional fire specialists from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also helping out.  Many Incident Meteorologists are also working these fires this summer.  Check out this recent visible image loop that shows the region between the evening of July 29th and through the morning of the 30th. For more information on these fires as well as others across the country, please go to these sites:  http://gacc.nifc.gov/oncc/, http://www.nifc.gov/, and http://www.inciweb.org/ .

(Image courtesy of Eric Thaler, SOO WFO DEN/BOU.  Data source - NOAA/NWS; Map - FEMA) 

Thursday, May 22, 2008 was truly a day the will live in infamy for many folks in and around the communities of western Weld County (and north eastern Larimer county), Colorado.  While the city of Windsor, Colorado sustained the most damage (total amounts still at large), many other towns were also affected by this large early season tornado (Platteville, Gilcrest, Milliken, western Greeley - where there was one fatality -, Timnath, and points just northeast of Fort Collins).  Albany County, Wyoming (including the city of Laramie) was also affected and damaged by this same storm early in the afternoon.  The area around Dacono, Colorado also took on some damage just after noon on the 22nd as a tornado, connected with a separate severe storm, bounced west of town.  This second storm ended up following a near parallel track to the first storm - only was displaced further to the west and remained mostly over the barren foothills as it too tracked to the north-northwest and into southern Wyoming - however, with no additional (apparent) damage.

Interesting atmospheric severe weather set-up for not only the front range of northern Colorado, but for the entire high and central plains region with many more strong tornadoes showing themselves and wreaking havoc in Kansas and Nebraska.  Even the west coast of the USA was not untouched by tornadoes on this day  - they too being influenced by the massive-deep-digging late season upper level trough.

For more concerning the morning tornadoes of northern Colorado please go to this satellite oriented report at: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/case_studies/20080522/    

Or, The NWS BOU/DEN report at: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=bou&storyid=8556&source=0

Or, for yet another look at the storms and set-up, please go to the CIMMS blog: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/660  �

Many large fires in southern/southeastern Russia have choked the skies with smoke. This image (first image) of the fires (locations outlined in red) was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite late last week (April 17, 2008). Most of these fires are  agricultural fires set by people, much as we do over here in the late winter/early spring.  However, there are so many buring at the same time with the low, mid, and upper level winds conducive to good ventilation and transport, that this morning’s GOES West Visible Image (April 22, 2008 - second image) shows the smoke plume reaching all the way across Minnesota, touching on wester Wisconsin (plume outlined in yellow).