It’s the million dollar question! @norcal74 has been talking about it, and he is much more on top of meteorology than I am. What’s your outlook, NorCal?
Quite a few places where a strong east wind could bring carnage, for example on the fires on south end of SRF Complex, largely surrounded to the west by long-unburned thick forest and one of America’s largest forest carbon storage projects (blue)!
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Not seeing much of any signal for moderate or strong east winds up there, just the typical diurnal cycles. Looks like Hilary will just be too far away to impact the current lightning fires in the SRF/KNF. Ironically the weak upper low currently west of the Bay Area (and helping to steer Hilary to the east) has origins going back to Eugene and as that feature moves onshore this weekend it may generate more lightning up there and/or help to break the normal inversions that like to set-in place for days or weeks in a more normal late August pattern.
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Just for the record… not an IMET… really more of a hobbyist. To me it does look like a transition to a N/NW wind pattern on Monday- maybe 24 hours. The gradient is not strong- maybe 4-6 mb but that is enough. Imetfromhotlist is right, no real big event. If we had HP over the PNW we could see a much more significant scenario with the effect of the HP to the north and the low formerly known as Hilary moving in the Great Basin. However, if there was a large HP cell in the PNW Hilary may not even have ever made it to California.
There is a huge HP ridge over the Plains states, that is also helping to steer Hilary.
It does look like a ridge builds in by end of the week into next week that could produce some light offshore flow for the northern part of the state.
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Hobbyist…
As I recall an “hobbyist”, by expertise, have in years (CDF) past to pinch hit for an IMET. When this occurred the moniker “Weather Guesser” (IEWG - Incident Established Weather Guesser) would apply.
Carry on the informative conversation
With my Thanks
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Red Flag
Warning, which is in effect from 1 PM this afternoon to 8 PM PDT
this evening.
- THUNDERSTORMS…Scattered thunderstorms with abundant lightning
on dry fuels resulting in an increased threat for fire starts.
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Curious-Non-Producer here just dropping in to say there is A LOT going on in the nops Wx dep’t right now…
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Do you have solid info, or just a tease?
T storms over Hoopa right now Red Flag for Del Norte
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Still have low pressure west of Frisco which has caused some active fire behavior on the SRF complexes through the night.
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Looks like the first moderate north/east wind event middle of next week. Could be an issue for the large fire complexes along the north coast. Not much or any precip on most of the complexes west of Weaverville.
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Yesterday we had 2.5” of rain on the eastern end of the Head fire, part of the Happy Camp Complex yet zero rain 30 miles west in Happy Camp.
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Smith River Complex got strong NE winds yesterday evening on the backside of the persistent low finally moving east across the Sacramento Valley. Ran 3.5 miles to SW down an aligned canyon.
RAMMB/CIRA SLIDER: Satellite Loop Interactive Data Explorer in Real-time with GOES-16 and Himawari-8 Satellite Imagery
White line is 24 hrs growth.
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Critical fire weather conditions likely in the Cascades starting early next week, as ridging builds in and breaks down as a potent but dry low pressure system moves into BC.
Onshore winds, instability, heat, high Haines indexes. Will not be good in the event of any new starts and existing fires establishing themselves.
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Active lightening, thunder, light rain and strong erratic winds in Happy Camp over the last hour or so. Word is they pulled some resources off the line up here due to weather concerns.
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NorthOps weather Friday am: Gusty N to NE winds will develop Tue night favoring the Sac Vly as well as ridges and channeled terrain areas from the Cascade/Sierra crest westward with dry & breezy offshore winds continuing Wed & Thu and overnight RH recoveries becoming poor to very poor.
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Looking like possibility of NW winds starting Tuesday and transitioning to N winds Weds morning over the Smith River Complex. With lots of areas to S and SE that haven’t had fire for a long time, looks like there is some potential for major growth on these fires to the south and east. Anyone been running the Pyrecast spread models? Pyrecast is being developed by SIG with funding from CPUC. I’ve been testing it for them on wildfires for the past 3 seasons, and it called the Bear Fire’s big blowup in 2020 pretty well about 3 days beforehand. It has some pretty grim runs for Smith River Complex at the higher percentile runs.
pyrecast.org - runs best in Chrome.
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Will the winds be isolated to just the far north or will they stretch further south, down into the lightning complex, etc?
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