Chronicling Critical Fire Weather Patterns of the United States

Critical fire weather patterns are important to understand as they occur when atmospheric conditions combine to allow for multiple natural fire starts, and increase the potential for extreme fire behavior. Mark Schroder and colleagues in 1964 provided the first comprehensive review of critical fire weather patterns. More recently, a chapter on critical fire weather patterns is included in the U.S. Forest Service "Synthesis of Knowledge of Extreme Fire Behavior". The chapter describes critical fire weather patterns in general and summarizes some regional pattern aspects, both of which are typically discussed in training courses, primarily S490. In conjunction with Predictive Services, we collected and analyzed critical fire weather patterns for each Geographical Area. These critical fire weather patterns include dry thunderstorms, downslope winds, thermal troughs, and dry cold frontal passages. We organized the case studies by Geographical Area and by critical fire weather pattern on a website. This will provide an update to previous critical fire weather pattern collections and a centralized, convenient location to access this database. We hope to continually update the database as more research and cases are developed.