The 2000 fire season brought to the forefront the issue of severe wildland fires in the United States. To address the need for new research and the development of predictive tools for managing wildland fires, Congress allocated funding under the National Fire Plan (NFP) to better equip government agencies to fight and study forest fires. As part of the NFP research agenda, the Eastern Area Modeling Consortium (EAMC) was established as one of five Fire Consortia for the Advanced Modeling of Meteorology and Smoke (FCAMMS). The centerpiece of the EAMC is an MM5-based modeling system designed to improve understanding of interactions between mesoscale weather processes and fires, and to develop better smoke transport assessments and predictions.

The MM5 modeling system is run twice daily in real time, initialized from observations at 0000 and 1200 UTC, on a 32-processor PC cluster located in East Lansing, MI. Results for the entire north-central and northeast USA are available on a 12km grid, with 4km data available for the Great Lakes region and for New England. Shortly after the system was initiated, on June 2, 2002, a wildfire occurred in the Double Trouble State Park in east-central New Jersey. The fire burned 1300 acres, destroyed or damaged 10 homes, and forced the closure of the Garden State Parkway for several hours due to dense smoke. The EAMC modeling system captured the weather associated with this event in real time on both the 12km and the 4km (New England) grid.

Results from the real-time simulation were analyzed to assess what role, if any, weather conditions played in the rapid growth of this fire. Observations from the event compared favorably with the model results, suggesting that the model captured the weather conditions sufficiently well that the role of mesoscale processes in the event could be assessed. Unusually dry surface conditions coupled with a dramatic increase in surface wind speeds on the morning of the fire appeared to contribute to the observed rapid fire growth and ensuing damage.

Additional high-resolution simulations of this event were produced, to better resolve the specific planetary boundary layer (PBL) processes associated with the observed fire behavior. These model results established that the surface wind surge coincided with an upward extension of the daytime mixed layer into higher-momentum air above a pre-existing nocturnal inversion. Downward mixing of this high-momentum air led to the observed surface wind surge and the initial rapid growth of the fire. The unusually dry surface air was traced to an upstream stratospheric intrusion 24-36 hours in advance of the event, that produced a localized area of unusually dry air at the surface. The temporal and spatial coincidence of the very dry air and strong surface winds caused the fire to evolve in a manner that was both unexpected and dangerous.

Using the results from these simulations, the EAMC is working to develop new fire-weather interaction indices that will help anticipate when these conditions are going to occur. Preliminary formulations of these indices will be presented.