Identifying Wildland Fire Data and Use Cases to Support Integration of Fire Weather Metrics into Model Evaluation Tools Plus (METplus) Verification System

As more of the population moves into the wildland urban interface, the area where vegetation and infrastructure meets, the need for accurate and reliable wildfire model outputs becomes crucial to provide end users, such as forecasters, with essential data and predictions for decision making. Consistent verification is a key element in determining the value of a forecast, and choosing how to use a forecast for decision making. But without a consistent set of metrics between fire personnel and the weather community across the country, verification may vary from location to location. The goal of this study was to address the gap in the availability of consistent fire verification observations and metrics. A use case during the Spring Fire of 2018 using HRRR and MADIS data was created using red flag warning criteria to help address this gap in consistency. This will serve as an example for a technical use case that will be included in future METplus releases.