Weather Forecaster Assists Firefighters in Battling Wildfires

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When forming plans of attack to fight wildfires, Incident Command Officers rely on information gathered from various support personnel. One of these key roles is played by the National Weather Service's Incident Meteorologist. One veteran weatherman who has served first responders throughout California during numerous wildfires is Rob Balfour, the Senior Forecaster from the National Weather Service's San Diego Office. Balfour's expertise was called upon most recently during the Freeway Complex Fire, also referred to as the Triangle Complex Fire, which ravaged homes and property throughout Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Embedded with Incident Command 6 at the Irvine Regional Park, Balfour worked with CAL Fire's Fire Behavior Analyst Denny O'Neil to give commanding officers up-to-the-minute forecasts on the weather and how it would affect the fire. According to Balfour, "They want to know what the weather changes are going to be, what the winds are going to do, what the relative humidity is going to do, what the temperatures are going to do, whether there is a chance of rain or anything like that." With his state-of-the-art tools including a computer-generated weather model, Balfour is able to issue an initial weather forecast within minutes of arriving at the scene of a wildfire. From there, he collects data with fire personnel, such as O'Neil, to continuously update the fire weather forecast.

During the Freeway Complex Fire, Balfour and O'Neil were able to survey the fire and the weather's behavior via a helicopter reconnaissance flight and by driving around the perimeter of some areas of the fire. Using Balfour's measurements and their observations, O'Neil gauged the rates at which the fire spread, what direction the fire was moving and what structures and areas it would impact, taking safety issues into account. After gathering this intelligence Balfour was able to prepare a written forecast, which is a one-page report that goes into the incident command plan that gives fire ground commanders a picture of what the weather will be like during a given operational period. Using this weather information along with data about the fire fuels and the topography of the fire area, O'Neil and Balfour were able to make predictions about how the fire would behave and made suggestions to the Incident Command Officers. From there, the officers issued their plan of attack.

The work of Rob Balfour and Denny O'Neil was instrumental in the success that firefighters had in extinguishing this California wildfire. Although computer models display probable predictions of fire weather behavior, the expertise and first-hand measurements and observations made by meteorologists like Balfour are necessary to give fire fighting professionals the data they need to make sound decisions on the fire ground.