Session 4, Climate Analysis
Fourth Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology

4.4

A Brush and Forest Fire Climatology for Massachusetts and Rhode Island: Results from 1964-2000

Alan E. Dunham and David R Vallee. NOAA/NWSFO, Taunton, MA 02780

The WFO Taunton County Warning Area (CWA) extends from the eastern slopes of the Berkshires and Monadnocks of western Massachusetts and southwest New Hampshire to the coastal plain of southeast New England. This region is largely forested with a very unique and extensive urban/woodland interface. Thie unique interface can pose a significant danger to life and property in the event of even relatively small brush or forest fires.

This paper will provide a climatology of brush and forest fires in the Taunton CWA, since 1950. This climatology will address basic antecedent conditions and synoptic scale weather patterns preceding each episode as well as frequency distributions by county, month and year for the period 1950-2000.

8:00 AM, Wednesday, 14 November 2001

Fourth Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology Meeting
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