Coupled Weather-Wildland Fire Modeling
Case
Studies
The following animations show coupled weather-fire behavior model simulations of the growth of wildfires. They were simulated using the Coupled Atmosphere-Wildland Fire Environment (CAWFE) model.
High Park Fire (Ignition: 6/9/12 near
Fort Collins, Colorado)
Collaborator: Mel Shapiro (NCAR)
The High Park fire is reported to have been ignited by lightning strike. It grew rapidly during a Colorado Front Range downslope windstorm, destroying 259 homes and burning 87284 acres.
View: towards the north. Fort Collins lies to the right, and
Poudre Canyon is the northernmost boundary of this domain. Each
frame is a minute apart, the total animation covers the local time from
5:45 am 6/9/12 to 3:00 am 6/10/12. The misty field represents smoke,
colored by concentration - higher
concentrations are more opaque (linearly with concentration) and
darker. The colors identifying the burning parts of the fire are the
sensible
heat fluxes released by the fire (see color bar to right, in
W/m^-2). Darker browns are lower fluxes. The surface
appears dark brown where fire has passed. Red arrows represent the
near-surface horizontal wind speed (the length of the arrow) and
direction (the arrows point downwind).
Animation
-
click
here
for
.avi (PC)
Animation
-
click
here
for
.mov
(Mac)
Esperanza Fire (Ignition: 10/26/07
near the Banning Pass in Cabazon, California)
Collaborators: Phil Riggan, Francis Fujioka, and David Weise (USDA
Forest Service Riverside Fire Laboratory), and Charles Jones (Univ. of
California at Santa Barbara)
View: towards the south. Cabazon, CA, is in the foreground. Each frame is a minute apart, the total animation covers the local time from 1:30 am 10/26/06 till 8 PM.
The misty field represents smoke, colored by concentration - higher concentrations are more opaque (linearly with concentration) and darker.
The colors identifying the burning parts of the fire are inspired by the radiant temperature color bar at fireimaging.com - brighter colors like yellow reflect higher surface fire sensible heat fluxes (see color bar to right). Darker browns are lower fluxes. The surface appears dark brown where fire has passed. The boxiness to the fireline shows the atmospheric grid sizes, onto which the fire fluxes on the fire fuel cell scale (5x5 within each atmos cell) have been summed.
Animation - click here for .avi (PC)
Animation - click here for .mov (Mac)
Big Elk Fire (Ignition: 7/17/02 near Pinewood Springs, Colorado)
This simulation shows several hours in the early period of the Big Elk
Fire, a 4400 acre wildfire ignited by a tailpipe. Fire behavior
was extreme reflecting the extremely dry conditions throughout Colorado
(including the lowest fuel moistures ever
recorded in the area). Initial spread was rapid, moving up a south
slope of ponderosa pine mixed with Douglas fir with crowning and
torching into high density thin-stemmed lodgepole pine at upper
elevations. The red field shows where the air was warmed at least
10 degrees by the heat released from the fire. The misty white
field represent smoke, with denser areas representing higher
concentrations. The arrows show the wind speed (shown by the
length of the arrows - longer arrows being stronger winds) and
direction near the surface. This case represents a
relatively simple scenario, with no large-scale weather features -
winds were driven primarily by solar heating of mountain slopes,
producing weak afternoon upslope conditions during the active fire
periods.
Animation - click here for .avi .
The simulation was visualized with Vis5D.
Keywords: wildfire models, fire behavior, forest fires, fire model, wildland fire model, simulation of High Park Fire, simulation of Esperanza Fire, model simulation of High Park wildfire, model simulation of Esperanza Wildfire