Wildfire Info
With the current high risk wildfire situation, and recent wildfires affecting access and enjoyment of the high country in some areas, I wanted to put together a list of websites where hikers and climbers can find out current wildfire information.
Please feel free to contact me if you have other websites that I can add!
Here's a link to a great article with captivating photos that describes our current fire dilemma in the West.
Under Fire, National Geographic Magazine July 2008
InciWeb is an interagency wildland fire incident information management system. The system was developed with two primary missions: The first was to provide a standardized reporting tool for the Public Affairs community during the course of wildland fire incidents. The second was to provide the public a single source of information related to active wildland fire information.
A number of supporting systems automate the delivery of incident information to remote sources. This ensures that the information on active wildland fire is consistent, and the delivery is timely.
The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), located in Boise, Idaho, is the nation's support center for wildland firefighting. Eight different agencies and organizations are part of NIFC. Decisions are made using the interagency cooperation concept because NIFC has no single director or manager.
CANSAC, California and Nevada Smoke and Air Committee, provides experimental forecast products of fire weather, smoke dispersion/transport, fire danger and fire behavior.
Vaisala Lightning Explorer displays recent lightning activity across the entire continental U.S. The lightning data displayed is 20 minutes delayed and updated every 20 minutes. Get the latest map available by clicking "Refresh" under the map. The map shows a 2-hour time period with lightning data color coded in 20-minute increments.