Basic Convective and Mesoscale Research
CIMMS Special Project – Firewhirls and Firefighter Safety
Funding Type: CIMMS Task I
Objectives
Isolate the meteorological conditions that support Firewhirls
in order to provide this information to firefighters to increase their
safety.
Accomplishments
A new collaborative effort with Jeff Savadel of the Nevada NWS and Dave
Davis of the Bureau of Land Management has been started to better understand
the meteorological conditions that support firewhirls. Firewhirls are
extremely hazardous to firefighters; the more we can learn about forecasting
them and the conditions which support them will help better protect
wildfire firefighters. The principle investigator is currently running
LES to explore the effects of varying surface heat flux and background
ambient winds on vertical vortices in the convective boundary layer.
The goal is to provide the NWS with matrix of meteorological conditions
and the types of vortices that can be expected with them. We also are
exploring the possibility of external funding to extend the scope of
this project.
This project is ongoing.