URGENT - FIRE WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Medford OR
958 AM PDT Thu Jul 25 2024


CAZ280-282-284-260400-
/O.EXA.KMFR.FW.W.0015.240725T2000Z-240726T0400Z/
Western Klamath National Forest-Shasta-
Trinity National Forest in Siskiyou County-
Siskiyou County from the Cascade Mountains East and South to Mt
Shasta-
958 AM PDT Thu Jul 25 2024

...RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 9 PM
PDT THIS EVENING FOR STRONG GUSTY WIND AND LOW RH FOR FIRE
WEATHER ZONES 280, 282, AND 284...

The National Weather Service in Medford has issued a Red Flag
Warning, which is in effect from 1 PM this afternoon to 9 PM PDT
this evening.

* IMPACTS...Strong winds combined with critically low relative
  humidity can lead to the rapid growth and spread of new and
  existing fires.

* AFFECTED AREA...Eastern zone 280 including the Scott and Salmon
  Mountains and portions of the Scott Valley. Also zones 282 and
  284 in southeast Siskiyou County.

* WIND...Southwest 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 40 mph.

* MINIMUM HUMIDITY...10 to 15 percent.

* DETAILED URL...View the hazard area in detail at
  https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map/?wfo=mfr

Dr. Daniel Swain

@Weather_West

#ParkFire is continuing to grow rapidly and exhibit extreme behavior/exotic phenomena in its plume, including strong rotation/vortices and supercell-like structure. It is affecting primarily rural areas attm, but will likely grow much larger given conditions. #CAwx #CAfire

CBS News reports : Park Fire “hell on Earth”

A wildfire that started Wednesday afternoon in a park near Chico, California, north of Sacramento, grew quickly to 6,465 acres by late night then exploded overnight to 45,549 acres, Cal Fire said. The Park Fire was 3% contained.

Authorities in Butte County and neighboring Tehama County issued evacuation orders and warnings, CBS News Sacramento reports, but there was no word on how many people were affected. Shelters were set up for people and for animals.

It wasn’t clear how many, if any structures were damaged or destroyed and there were no reports of injuries or deaths.

Click to access Newsletter-July-2024-PDF.pdf

Escalating fire danger ahead per Dr. Daniel Swain at weatherwest.com

“

Escalating wildfire activity across western U.S. and Canada likely to continue for weeks to months

Fire Season 2024 is now already (as earlier predicted) escalating rapidly throughout western North America. During the recent record heatwave, numerous fires broke out in California–some of which have become large (in the 10s of thousands of acres) and causing some loss to structures. In recent days, however, this elevation in wildfire activity (both ignitions and fire behavior) has become much more widespread along the West Coast, from southern CA northward into Oregon, Washington, and western Canada (including not only interior British Columbia but also northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories). Many of these new fires, fostered by record warmth and worsening drought in many areas, were sparked by a mix of wet and dry thunderstorms. Several still-burning major fires in CA, mainly in the Southern Sierra, were sparked by lightning; hundreds more, however, have ignited in recent days across OR, WA, and western Canada with yet more ignitions likely due to widespread lightning again today.

One notable statistic: the recent period of sustained record heat in California and parts of Oregon appears to have yielded a record-high amount of atmospheric evaporative demand–i.e, “atmospheric thirstiness”–during this period as well, drying vegetation to record-dry levels in some areas for the time of year and accelerating seasonal drying trends even at moister higher elevation regions. This sets the stage for what might come next, wildfire wise, in the coming weeks/months.

Evaporative demand as well as the vapor pressure deficit (indicative of “atmospheric thirstiness”) reached record levels across much of California, Nevada, and Oregon over the past month. Data via climatetoolbox.org.

Unfortunately, the fire weather outlook for virtually all of these areas looks favorable for continued escalation in fire behavior/intensity and ignition likelihood over the next couple of weeks. More lightning is likely, some of it dry or nearly so (mainly outside of CA, though some is still possible in the far northern mountains and Sierra Nevada), along with continued anomalous heat into August except for a brief cooler interlude in late July (which may compensate by temporarily increasing southwesterly winds in fire areas). With the expected expansion of the anomalous intense and broad Western ridge again by early August, the first half of the month may well be characterized by once again hotter than average temperatures and below average precipitation along the West Coast and across the interior of western Canada. In fact, the core summer monsoon region in the Desert Southwest, which has benefited from a couple of recent weeks of unusually active thunderstorm activity, may also dry out considerably during this period amid what would usually be the peak of the monsoon–perhaps allowing seasonal predictions of a drier-than-average monsoon in many areas to come closer to reality despite a wetter-than-expected start (except perhaps in New Mexico, which does appear to have gotten quite a lot of water in recent weeks). Firefighting resources are starting to become stretched thin as numerous large fires spread in both the western U.S. and Canada (which share a finite pool of personnel and equipment during peak fire season), so as extreme fire weather episodes occur in the coming weeks (lightning, heat, and/or wind events) things might become progressively dicier.”