Comparison of fire spread simulations generated from different weather data inputs

The FARSITE fire behavior modeling system simulates wildland fire spread as a function of terrain, vegetation and weather inputs. Weather data can consist of observations from one or more weather stations, or raster data from a gridded product such as model-generated weather simulations, or gridded forecasts from the National Digital Forecast Database. This study will compare FARSITE simulations using these different types of weather data for case studies in southern California. The effect of length of simulation period will also be examined. When possible, we will compare observed fire perimeters to the corresponding simulated perimeters