Monday, Aug. 16
At 8 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 16 I received a call asking if I was available to go to a fire. By that evening I was on a plane heading to Fairbanks enroute to the Central Complex in Interior Alaska.

Before heading out to the fire, I stopped at the Alaska Fire Service. AFS, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center for fires throughout the state, is located on Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska. I arrived at AFS around midnight and spent the night camping on Fort Wainwright at the staging area where the arriving fire crews go before being sent to the various fires around the state. The staging area, which was next to the helicopter landing strip, was a rather noisy place to sleep but made up for that by providing excellent coffee in the morning. I attended several briefings that morning at AFS about the current fire, fuel (vegetation) and weather situation across the state of Alaska. Before starting the three hour drive out to the fire, I stopped by the Fairbanks National Weather Service Office to get a detailed weather briefing for the area around the Central Complex.

Tuesday, Aug. 17
I arrived at the town of Central, Alaska, late on the afternoon of Aug. 17. Fire camp and the Incident Command Post were located in Circle Hot Springs, which is about eight miles south of Central. The ICP was the base of operations for the nearly 600 people assigned to the fire. Usually the IMET is also based at ICP, but in this case, the need for a good Internet connection to get weather data quickly meant that ‘fire weather headquarters’ was the Far North School in Central. Mike Richmond, an IMET from Fairbanks, had been working out of this location for over a week by the time I arrived. Driving back and forth between the school and the ICP all the time was a bit inconvenient, but otherwise the empty school was a great location to work from.

A significant northeast wind event was expected on Thursday, Aug. 19th, so Mike stayed at the fire through Friday morning. This gave us two full days working together, which smoothed the transition between forecasters and allowed plenty of time for Mike to pass local forecasting knowledge on to me. With major changes coming in the weather, Wednesday and Thursday were quite busy. Having two forecasters at the fire for those two days made things much more manageable.

Being an IMET on a large fire can be very intense but also quite rewarding. Working with Steve Frye’s Northern Rockies based National Type 1 Team, which was managing the fire, was a superb experience I hope to repeat in future fire seasons.

The meteorologist’s purpose on the fire team is to provide on-site, detailed weather forecasting support specifically for the fire area to help plan operations and make sure everyone stays safe.

Work days on a fire are generally 16 hours long and start early in the morning. Things begin with checking the latest weather observations, model data, satellite and radar images, forecasts and weather discussions to get ready for the morning briefing. Each morning and evening the Incident Management Team gives a briefing to the firefighters before they start their shift. The IMET presents the weather section of these briefings, describing the expected weather conditions and any potential weather hazards. Throughout the day, the meteorologist watches and analyzes the weather (often working with a Fire Behavior Analyst from one of the state or local land management organizations), issuing updates and alerts as necessary for changing conditions. They are also responsible for writing spot forecasts as requested to support burnouts and other operations. Coordination concerning the current and anticipated weather conditions occurs frequently between the IMET, the local NOAA Weather Service office and any other IMETs working at nearby fires in the area, to make sure everyone’s forecasts are in agreement. It is also the IMET’s job to provide weather briefings at the numerous planning meetings, and answer any weather questions that come up. The forecast for the next day is typically composed during the afternoon or evening, in time to get in the Incident Action Plan at the start of the next shift. This document is distributed to the crew.

The Central Complex was made up of a group of large fires in the vicinity of the towns of Central, Circle and Circle Hot Springs. During the time I spent on the fire, the Central Complex included the Wolf Creek, Bolgen Creek, Takoma Bluff, Big Bluff, Crazy, Rock Creek, Preacher Creek and Middle Birch Fires. It was approximately 80 miles from the northern most extent of the Preacher Creek Fire to the southern tip of the Wolf Creek Fire. From east to west the fires were spread over about 70 miles. This 560 square mile rectangle was the area for which I was responsible. The fires in the complex had burned about 324,000 acres, by Aug. 18, and grew to 458,600 acres, by Aug. 26. By Wednesday, Aug. 18th, my first day forecasting as an IMET, the total acreage across the state of Alaska burned this year was 5.05 million acres breaking the previous record for the most acres burned in a year set in 1957. By the end of the summer the old record was shattered with nearly 6.5 million acres burned.

The Far North School in Central, Alaska, made a very unique base of operations for me. The opening of the Central School had been delayed due to concerns about the fires reaching the town, so for the first week I had the school pretty much to myself. The school was a marvelous location to work. It had numerous luxuries not normally available in fire camps, such as extra computers with Internet connection, a kitchen, indoor plumbing (including a shower!) and, of course, the playground. My tent, set up in between the school buildings, made a cozy home for the duration of the fire. A day or two after arriving, fire structure protection (which included a portable water tank, pump, hoses, and a bunch of sprinklers) was set up around the school in case the fire reached the town. Although this was all really for the benefit of the school, I thought it was pretty neat because it was the first time my tent had ever had structure protection.

Monday, Aug. 23
School started on Monday, Aug. 23, a week after I left Juneau to go to the fire. This year 12 students from kindergarten through high school were attending the Central school. The area where I was working was a computer lab, classroom and library. The teacher was quite
gracious and let me keep working even when class was going on. It had been some time since I had been to the first day of school and I found that I missed it a bit.

It is not often that you get to have recess while on a fire. The students were a great bunch of kids and a joy to be around. The atmosphere of the school was amazingly friendly and welcoming to a misplaced meteorologist. Several people from the fire team came in and taught lessons or talked about their job. Joe Anderson, one of the medics from the fire and a retired teacher, taught a wonderful lesson that was a combination of how to write a five paragraph essay and how to juggle (I am still practicing). I gave a presentation to the students about what IMETs do on a fire and showed them some pictures of the burnout operation that I watched several days earlier. I also talked about what weather forecasters do when they are working in the office and how I became a meteorologist.

Throughout the time I was in interior Alaska the days were shortening rapidly and temperatures dropping substantially. With the lowering sun angle, strong temperature inversions were able to form most nights and trapped very dense smoke in the valleys. The last couple of days on the fire provided a very nice taste of what fall was supposed to be like. Brisk northeast winds brought crisp, cold nights and sunny blue skies during the day.

Thursday, Aug. 26
On Thursday, Aug. 26th the fire management team transitioned to a much smaller organization. I drove with the team back to Fairbanks on Thursday afternoon and flew back to Juneau on Friday. After ten days of camping with no rain fly on my tent, I was greeted at the Juneau airport by a torrential downpour as a reminder of what fall was going to really be like.

Article By Julia Ruthford Reprinted with permission from: Julia Ruthford Originally published in: Cloudburst Chronicle National Weather Service Juneau, Alaska Volume 4, Issue 2 Fall/Winter 2004 http://pajk.arh.noaa.gov/Newsletter/news1104.pdf

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