Lightning and Significant Wildfire Potential in the Pacific Northwest

Lightning is a contributor to wildfire activity over the Pacific Northwest of the US. Historical lightning strike data has been used to help develop a wildfire climatology for a number of wildfire danger rating areas over Oregon and Washington. Analysis of daily strike sums revealed that number of fire ignitions from lightning, tempered by background fire danger, is the biggest individual predictor of Significant Fire potential for the Pacific Northwest. Forecasts of lightning, and resulting fire ignitions, using analog upper air map typing and statistical regression of meteorological data from numerical weather models are used in daily publication of probabilistic fire activity forecasts of Significant Fires from the Predictive Services program. This presentation will outline the method of analysis and forecasts used to prepare such wildfire outlooks.