STORM2K

Just finished a day long work session with the director of Emergecy Services for Navajo County and unless we get some BIG TIME storms and I do mean BIG TIME (we now need 6 FEET of snow) the director is estimating at LEAST 500 will die in the Pinetop Lakes Country Club area "when, not IF" a wildfire like the Rodeo Chediski Fire happens this year The reason for the death toll? This is the WORST drought condidtions ANYONE alive has ever witnessed and the LIVE Ponderosa Pines are even DRIER than kiln dried, air dried lumber you buy!! The fire "will crown" and move at an estimated 150 MPH in the crowns of the trees incenerating everything in it's path in a matter of minutes!

According to the forest service, as of today, 2 Jan, the soil moisture content is LESS than 4% (this is done by taking one square mile, taking samples every 20 feet and 6 inches deep).....

I ask everyone here at Storm2K to say prayers for those of us in Arizona, New Mexico and ESPECIALLY Texas and Oklahoma, more so Texas at the moment, we have it BAD but the folks in the Panhandle have it WORSE!!!

Dennis

Your treees didn't all burn up last time?

I thought ya'll had record snow last winter. How can fire move at 150mph?......MGC

Crown Fires (or firestorms as they are also called) generate their own wind systems with hurricane force winds and tornadic like vortices that help them propagate. I don't know how fast the Rodeo Chediski Fire moved but the Aspen on Mt. Lemmon in 2003 ran at faster than 80 mph at times and the Santa Ana dirven fires in SoCA run faster than 60 mph all of the time. Also, big fires tend to develop a convective plume which aids in entraining fresh air at high speeds for fire maintenance-these plumes can be identified by the convective cloud towers (pyrocumulus). As the towers collpse you get the same effect as one does when w T-storm tower collapses- a very intense downburst which accelerates the fire run in a randome and erratic manner.

Steve

I hope some of that Cali rain doesn't bypass y'all! Gluck

NW AZ might get a little-the White Mountains and SE AZ nada.

Steve

MGC wrote:I thought ya'll had record snow last winter. How can fire move at 150mph?......MGC

Steve said it very well.......in these firestorms (which killed 13 of my wifes crew in Glenwood Springs Colorado) winds reach in excess of 250 MPH hurling hot pine cones up to 15 miles ahead of the fire which in turns cranks up the wind even HIGHER!!!

There's also an effect called "Uphill Crowning, Upslope run", as a basic knowledge, winds move uphill faster than on even plains, we have MAJOR uphill runs of fires.

Steve, at one point in the Rodeo Chediski Fire it was clocked with the Upslope Run of OVER 200 MPH.......hundreds of dead animal carcasses were found as if they were trying to out run the fire..........
Dennis

The same thing happened to the people who tried to outrun the Peshtigo Fire in 1877. Urban firestorms such as the ones after the Earthquakes in SFO and Tokyo and the intense incendiary bombing raids in Hamburg and Dresden and Japan during WWII have historically killed many thousands of people.

Steve