- Conduct Wildfire Simulations
- Optimize Weather Stations
- Weather Station Application
- Open Source Materials
- Pilot Upper-Air Profiler
Wildfire Forecasting
- Wildfire Forecasting Application: PyreCast™
LIVE
Currently in beta, PyreCast™ is publicly available through a free, web-based platform. Through our API, it integrates seamlessly with existing workflows and technology used by electric utilities, emergency management agencies, and others responsible for fire mitigation planning.
The application offers three forecasts, enabling users to see where active fires will spread, when fire weather poses particular dangers, and where new destructive fires may occur.
The Weather tab provides eight-day forecasts, updated every six hours, of key weather parameters affecting wildfire behavior (temperature, relative humidity, winds, fire weather indices, etc.).
The Active Fires tool shows the locations of actively burning fires as identified through satellite-based heat detection and provides forecasts of where they are projected to spread over the next three days, much like a hurricane track forecast.
The Risk tool works by igniting hundreds of millions of hypothetical fires across the landscape and modeling their spread under forecast weather conditions over the next five days. This makes it possible to identify areas where rapidly spreading fires may occur. Hypothetical fires are also ignited near powerlines to help utilities decide where to shut off power to avoid sparking fires, although these forecasts are proprietary and therefore not publicly available.
FIRE FORECASTING TEAM
The Fire Forecasting Team offers freely available, interactive tools for forecasting wildfire risk. Our web-based platform forecasts fire weather conditions, shows the locations of actively burning fires, and forecasts where they are likely to spread, and identifies areas at greatest risk of being burned by possible future fires.
These tools show which locations are at greatest risk of wildfire in the near term, enabling agencies and utilities to position crews, plan evacuations, order public safety power shutoffs, and take other risk mitigation measures.