Characterizing Drainage Flows that Result in Smoke
Intrusions from Prescribed Burning: Rx Burning in the WUI of Bend, OR
Susan O’Neill, Miriam Rorig, Rick Graw and Roger Ottmar
Recording of a presentation at the May 2015 AMS Fire and
Forest Meteorology Conference in Minneapolis, MN.
Excerpt from the abstract: “At night, the nocturnal inversion
sets up, trapping emissions from the smoldering stages of fires, which can lead
to smoke being transported along river drainages directly into towns. The
complex terrain makes it particularly difficult to predict when smoke from
fires, sometimes many tens of miles away, will be transported into smoke
sensitive areas.”
Comments from Blane Heumann (TNC): Burning in Bend OR is burning in a “fish bowl” from a smoke perspective.
I took away a couple bits to think about: smoke models do not currently do well
at predicting smoke issues from overnight or extended smoldering consumption;
and cool stuff using weather station data and typical burn prescription to
calculate statistics on number and timing of available burn days (in terms of
temp, RH and winds).
The link above takes you to the abstract, which has a link to the recording of the presentation. To go directly to the recording, click here.