Tag: cal fire

New fires starting every day. These winds are flowing out of the west. They’re pushing the flames away from the fire as lightning strikes in the foothills are sparking more fire concerns, and your family needs to be ready. There’s some nerves about evacuation response in the Tahoe Basin. KCRA 3 meteorologists are. Conditions outside fire behavior. If this fire is hot enough, it can push that cloud even higher. How to protect your property? But you just want to braided it so that it’s attached to their hair. Take time now to think about what’s most important to you that you want to take with you in an instant, and brand new tools that could save lives. We will implement that seek and destroy mission in *** KCRA 3 wildfire ready special. Welcome and thank you for joining us for our KR 3 wildfire ready special. We’re in the heart of wildfire season in Northern California, and so far it’s been *** quiet year, but we all know that the next big fire could ignite any day. The entire KCRA 3 weather team is here with the information you and your loved ones need to know, and we know, Heather, fires can start anytime, anywhere. Do you know how to get alerts for evacuations? Well, here’s some important tips. Each county in California has an alert program. You can sign up for if you work in one county but live in another, you should sign up for both. Scan the QR code for the list of alert programs. Another good thing to do is during *** fire, check your county sheriff and Office of Emergency Management social media pages. How about in the middle of the night? And what if your power goes out? Coming up later, I’ll show you *** tool that could provide *** life saving alert. Right now, fuels in the foothills in the Sierra are as dry as they can be. And when monsoon moisture comes up from the south, we get the risk for lightning fires. Lightning is the only natural cause of wildfire in California, but it can also cause the fires that are the hardest to put out. According to the National Science Foundation, 70% of all the acreage burned in the West is because of *** lightning fire. Coming up in *** few minutes, I’m going to show you the brand new sensors that were just installed in the Tahoe area that can help fire agencies detect *** lightning fire in seconds. Even without lightning, weather has *** big influence on our fire risk. Every day our team looks at wind, humidity, and fuel moisture to help you prepare for that risk with our fire threat index. The QR code on your screen will take you to that index at KCRA.com. One thing you can do right now is plan your evacuation route, and if you have young drivers at home, make sure they know the turns without using navigation and make sure that your go bag is ready with everything you and your animals need. Some of the things included in that list. Make sure you have *** 3 day supply of food and water. Make sure that you have *** first aid kit and make sure you have all of your prescriptions and medications. If you want to see the full list, we’ve got that online on our wildfire ready guide, and you can use our app to learn about fires burning near you. So far this year, more than 354,000 acres have burned on state and federally managed land. That is higher than the. 5 year average for this same time period and this year started off with two of the three most destructive fires in state history, showing just how severe that ongoing threat can be. Coming up, I’ll show you how wildfire simulations are helping Cal Fire learn about past fires, battle current ones, and prevent future blazes. Now to the Tahoe area where experts are using *** new network of lightning sensors to help prevent destructive fires. Lightning fires start in some of the most remote spots in California, so it can take days to see smoke. By then, *** fire could be out of control. Now the Tahoe Basin is home to *** network of sensors that can detect *** lightning strike within 100 ft and then alert firefighters in less than *** minute. This is one of those sensors positioned at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab. There are 2 metal plates. It’s one of 9 keeping watch for high risk lightning in the Tahoe Basin. Basically, lightning will disturb this electromagnetic field, and it’ll be able to pinpoint where it was based off of that. It was developed by the Fire Neural Network team. The group got its start in Florida, the lightning capital of the United States. Its purpose is based on one big idea. Not all lightning is created. FNN’s Caroline Cummo says that *** strike lasting just 0.2 million. lids, the blink of an eye is enough to ignite *** wildfire. The strike is touching the ground 1000 times longer than normal strikes. FNN sensors single out those lightning strikes, then use data on fuel type in recent weather to predict the potential for an ignition. The data end up here in *** color coded dashboard. These big red dots are considered the high risk strikes. Cal Fire will get alerts and coordinates to within 100 ft for any high risk strikes. That’s going to be substantial on us, not only fire suppression efforts, but stocking that response up appropriately. Battalion Chief Nathan Ment says it’s the randomness of lightning that creates the biggest challenges. Lightning doesn’t. To land next to *** road necessarily right it’s that access. FNN sensors can alert them of *** threat in just 40 seconds. That alert process happens and then the human element can come in at that point, validate, verify, send resources if need be, instead of waiting for smoke, which could take days. Snow Lab lead scientist Dr. Andrew Schwartz says that’s exactly why he wanted to help bring the. And sensors to the region. Hopefully the sensor network gets away from that waiting game and becomes we can become *** little bit more proactive. Cal Fire says it uses every tool at its disposal to fight these remote lightning fires, but it’s always on the public to be aware of the risk and to be ready this time of year. If you are informed or if you gather intel or information that there is *** lightning fire. Uh, don’t wait for the evacuation warning or order to come. If *** fire starts nearby, you may need to leave at *** moment’s notice, but how can you make sure you get the warning, especially if it happens *** fire overnight. Take *** look at this important tool that could save lives. If *** fire starts in the middle of the night, do you know where to get your warning information? Sure, *** phone, that’s *** great tool, but what happens if your phone, it’s in silent mode, it’s turned off, or worse yet, Your power goes out. This NOAA weather radio is going to be one of your best tools to stay informed during *** wildfire. If there was an active alert, you would hear it out of the radio here. Right now, of course it’s just delivering *** forecast, but if there was an active alert, it would be followed with information from the National Weather Service for your region or your county on ***. Exactly what to do and where to go next. If you are deaf or hard of hearing or have *** low or reduced vision, there are two other great options to alert you, especially when you need information quickly. The strobe light, which attaches to the alerts issued from the NOAA weather radio, this would flash brightly to alert you to wake up and get out if you needed to. Then there’s also the pillow shaker, which is *** great option, which you can actually put under your pillow, and this would shake to let you know that an alert has been issued for your county. Getting access to vital information, this is going to be one of the best ways to do it through the NOAA weather radio. This is good to go to give you all of the access to updates and information, especially when *** wildfire is threatening. Earlier we mentioned those important things that you should pack in your go bag, but there may be other important heirlooms that you want to keep safe. Kelly Curran shows us how to make sure your family memories are preserved here at KCRA. We know *** thing or two about digitizing videos. We’re currently in the process of uploading our archives. It’s certainly time consuming, but there are services available to do it for you. I. It can be very costly and time consuming, so that’s why *** lot of people would just bring it here, let us take care of it for them, take away that that hassle and headache. Mike’s camera in Midtown Sacramento sees customers requesting to digitize every day, and it’s not just photos. We do digitize photographs like physical photos. We can digitize slides, negatives of all sizes, video tapes, VHS, reels, um, many DBs. You can organize your photos and negatives or just. Throw them all in *** box and deal with it later. We do offer *** service called *** Gather box for photographs, so that’s *** box that you buy from us. You fill it all up as much as possible, um. Sometimes you can fit up to like 1000 4x6s in there. Bring that back to us and we can have that done for you in about 3 to 4 days. Typically customers request flash drives. You can get more than one to share with family or friends for safekeeping or skip the hard copy entirely so you won’t waste time looking for it in an emergency. We can send things through email so you can save them into your cloud in case you can’t find the physical flash drives or CDs, Kelly Curran, KCR 3 News. Prices for digitizing photos in one of the gather boxes provided by Mike’s camera can range from $250 to $350 depending on the quality. When we come back, how agencies are using simulation programs to better prepare for fires, plus those huge clouds you see during fires, we’re going to explain what those are and how they form. Playing with fire, it’s *** new way to fight it. Fire management agencies are relying more on simulation programs to better understand fire behavior. Meteorologist Ophelia Young sits through *** simulation with fire officials in Tahoe. I’m in Golden Bear, South Lake Tahoe, *** subdivision of 150 to 200 homes. There’s one way in and one way out. What could happen if *** fire were to spark right there. You’re showing up. You got 8 acres. What are you thinking right now? Battalion Chief Brett Swingen is thinking one of three things that’s life, property, or environment. In this fire. There’s *** lot of homes, *** lot of people in that area, *** lot of life. So our number one priority is evacuations and getting people out, right? Life before property. Now where to evacuate this area down here is not really. Threatened. I’m not gonna maybe do evacuation orders down there more so up here and forecasting where this is gonna go. He plugs three main factors into this simulation program fuel, topography, and weather. The fuels are shrubs, grasses, needle cast. This is really receptive for embers and ember casts and things like that that can really impact control efforts in the fire. The topography kind of come in this uh to the north northeast already and then the wind pushing that that way as well. And speaking of those winds right now this has *** 60 mile an hour wind on it. Very bad day to have *** fire in that area. Assistant Chief Brian Newman says this simulation helps determine their next steps. Where are we going to be able to organize and direct resources? Trucks. Bulldozers And or aircraft. Is the amount of resources that we have arriving at scene and responding, is that enough? And where to position them? Who will position them? Just this fire alone you would have Lake Valley Fire District, the city, South Lake Ta Fire and Rescue. Uh, Tahoe Management unit or the US Forest Service and Cal Fire would all have *** piece on this fire. Now 7 hours, 700 acres still burning northeast. These streets all have multiple homes on them. But then this is heading towards heavenly, and now this fire is burning into the mountains. The strategy changes and. So does the conversation. Now *** new challenge. So there are no roads up here. It’s very steep terrain, heavy fuels, and as you get in this upper elevations, the wind starts to impact it more so the rates of spread increase the intensity of the fire. They may need *** new simulation. They’ve got one in seconds. multiple simulations over and over. Before these plug and play fire simulation programs, Chief Newman would use *** sandbox to physically model *** fire. It took *** lot of math and time they often didn’t have. Now Chief Newman and Sweringen produce simulations regularly for evacuations. Leadership and teamwork exercises to planning where to reduce fuels, whether *** fire sparks right there, right now or later. No fire is the same, no incidents the same, right? Evacuation orders are always going to be different, different areas, fire is gonna burn differently from South Lake Tahoe, Ophelia Young, KCRA 3 News. Fire chiefs look forward to the next step in wildfire simulation technology, which is integrating artificial intelligence and real-time satellite images that will happen in the next few years. Now we often talk about weather and how it can influence *** wildfire, but sometimes the most intense fires create weather of their own. Meteorologist Dirk Ver Dorn joins us now to explain pyrocumulonimbus clouds and the erratic conditions that come with them. The making of *** pyro cumulonimbus cloud. The source is going to be *** little different here of lift, and that’s where the pyro part comes in. You have the fire that’s associated with this cloud. cumulo means the heap, and then you have nimbus, which means the rain that’s associated with it. So we have our fire. That’s going to be the source of lift. You have the air that’s being pulled up. You have all these gasses and smoke that are rising up because they’re warmer than the surrounding air, so you get the column of smoke associated with this. Now if this fire is hot enough, it can push that cloud even higher and it develops into, well, you have the water vapor that’s in the surrounding air that starts to lock on to all those particulates, and there’s *** lot of particulates to lock onto when you have *** column of smoke, but still it cools, it condenses, and it can even get to the point. If the fire is strong enough where you, you can have some rain associated with this, and again, even the possibility of some lightning associated with this that can actually create thunderstorms. Now the good thing about this, and there’s been cases where this has happened where the rain has actually helped to put out the fire. The problem though is if you have lightning, that can actually be *** problem because it could cause more fires to start. Now here we have *** pyrocumulus cloud and you can see the column of smoke from the fire rising up to *** point where the air. starts to cool and the smoke starts to dissipate in different directions, but there’s *** hot spot that has created enough lift where we’re getting this cauliflower looking cloud on top. That’s the pyrocumulus cloud, the cloud that’s caused by fire. Now this is not *** pyro cumulonimbus cloud. There’s no rain associated with it. It’s just *** pyro cumulus cloud. I wanted to show you that. Also what I wanted to talk about was *** change that’s been made. Now in 2017, the World Meteorological Organization. In their international cloud atlas they chose the term cumulonimbus Flamagenitus cloud to describe flame created rain clouds. So let’s go ahead and take *** look at this Flama means fire. Genitis means created. So this is then *** heaped up rain fire created cloud. Well, that’s *** mouthful, but it is descriptive. Coming up, protecting large animals in case of *** fire, the best ways to make sure horses and other animals are safe in some of our rural areas. Evacuating ahead of *** wildfire, it’s stressful, but evacuating with large animals that can make it even more complicated. Certainly can. KCR meteorologist Kelly Kern visited all about equine Animal Rescue to learn some tips on how to get your horses out safely. We see the footage every fire season, horse owners fleeing with full trailers and even horses being set loose to run for their lives. Mary Beth Brown, *** horse owner and volunteer with All About Equi Animal Rescue, is no stranger to evacuating. Always evacuate early. So my recommendation is always, even if you’re in *** warning area. That’s the time to evacuate just like you would do with your family or smaller animals, you want to have *** go bag. If there’s any medications or grains or feed, you wanna make sure that those are packed and ready to go. So again, you know, you kind of just want to make sure that you are prepared. So if you have *** trailer, you can keep that packed, keep that stock and practice. You definitely want to practice at home because when it’s not an emergency, if you’re having problems, it’s guaranteed you will have problems when the emergency arises because you’re stressed, they’re stressed, they don’t know what’s going on. And know where you’re going before fire season line up, find *** friend, find *** boarding stable, find somewhere that you know if you have to pick up in the middle of the night. You can call on your way. Unfortunately, wildfires can move faster than you can evacuate. Time for Plan B. Set them loose. There’s many reasons that you may not. Be able to remove the animal from the situation. In that case, while you still have control of the animal, you, you want to put identifiers on him. So the best case scenario would be ahead of time get your horse microchipped just like you would *** cat or *** dog. You can also use *** Sharpie to write your phone number on their hoof or use livestock paint markers to identify your horse. You can any type of tag, so *** key ring. Um, cattle ear tags, which you can get at your local feed store, but you just want to braid it in so that it’s attached to their hair, and then you can use the rubber band, you can use athletic tape, whatever it is to, to tie it off. Freeze brands like these can be used to identify your. when it’s located after the fire. Brown says no matter what, the horse community in California has each other’s backs. The community is here for you, especially in times of need, because everybody knows it could be them at some point. Kelly Curran, KR 3 News. If you must set your horse loose, remove halters and tack that could snag on trees, as well as nylon halters and fly masks that could melt in the heat. Also have copies of ownership documents as well as photos of your horses to prove they’re yours. Thank you for joining us for our wildfire ready special. Remember we have important evacuation information plus *** list of what to bring in *** go bag on the KCRA 3 app. Have *** good night.