Fishlake National Forest Manning Creek, Utah
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The U.S. Forest Service is conducting a prescribed burn.
Roger Ottmar, Research Forester, U.S. Forest Service:
This is part of a very large project.
It's called the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment.
And it's as close to a wildfire as you can get.
The objective is to collect a suite of data
to both evaluate and advance our fire and smoke models.
To be able to put in instrumentation
ahead of a real wildfire is very dangerous
and almost impossible to do.
One NASA grantee and his collaborators are working on
a model to predict how future wildfires will spread.
The model is known as WRF-SFIRE.
Adam Kochanski, PhD, University of Utah:
NASA funded our previous project
that actually allowed us
to build, you know, this prototype.
The fire model, it's focused
not just on the prescribed burns,
but also on wildland fires.
A mobile LIDAR unit collects fire plume data
to validate the model.
We were able to get, you know,
the new forecast run just before the briefing.
And just right after the briefing
we get the first results.
So we have an idea about the wind speed
and the rain.
Winds aloft are going to be... start to crank this afternoon.
So there's gonna be a sweet spot early this afternoon.
Despite strong winds, the model predicts
the fire will move slowly uphill.
This is our one concern area where we have continuous fuel.
We're gonna send the Hotshots
that are rolling out of here right now.
All teams must be in position before ignition.
[music and natural sounds]
We see all the valley over there.
We should be in a good spot
to set up our truck and LIDAR.
It's going to be a really intense burn.
Closer in, the plume should be going like this direction.
So we will be able to really have a good angle.
The model also predicts
the plume will travel in a southwesterly direction.
Command and Control, Valley Floor
Attention on the crew net. Attention on the crew net.
Helicopter is airborne
and they are igniting the test fires.
A helitorch performs ignition from the sky.
[walkie-talkie chatter]
The Hotshots go to work down below.
There we go.
After several hours the fire has grown in size and intensity.
[fire roars]
The WRF-SFIRE model accurately predicts
the fire and plume behavior.
I'm super happy.
I cannot believe that our forecasting
was really spot on in terms of
how strong the winds are over this region.
The same, you know, in terms of the plume location.
I mean, you see that we are
actually really close to the plume
and that's what we wanted.
Five years ago, when we were talking about
you know, real-time coupled fire atmosphere forecasting,
and people were saying that...
well, that's impossible.
Five years later
and we have completely different computational power
to execute those forecasts.
And you can really do that.
That's really the takeaway message for this whole program
is that he was able to initiate his model
today and yesterday
and get a forecast that matches what we're seeing.
So I'm super happy that NASA had faith in this whole idea.
It's great to see that running...
working... and I hope that, you know, pretty soon
you know, other people will be using that
and it will be very helpful
in designing prescribed burns
but also in terms of fighting wildland fires.
Accurate fire models can help first responders
deploy resources safely and effectively.
WRF-SFIRE is a collaborative effort of NASA funded teams from
CU Denver, University of Utah, and Colorado State University
led by Jan Mandel, Adam Kochanski, and Kyle Hilburn.
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