New York state fire climatology

A New York state historic fire-weather and wildland fire occurrence database to support the Division of Environmental Conservation Wildland Fire Management Programs is being developed. The project objectives are to build a database of relevant 1300 hour and 24-hour fire weather elements (e.g., temperature, humidity, wind, and build a database of New York state historic wildfire occurrence. National Weather Service, Federal Aviation Administration, and co-operative precipitation weather stations are being utilized to generate a proxy set of Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) for the period 1980-2004. The final dataset will be generated in Weather Information Management System format compatible with decision-support tools such as FireFamily+. An historical fire occurrence database is being built utilizing an existing NY Forest Ranger database, and by keypunching records from logbooks. These records extend back to the 1940s. Once the two databases are completed, analysis will be done to examine and quantify relationships between weather and fire across the state.