Development of a seasonal fire severity forecast for the contiguous United States

d. The weather forecasting needs of the fire management community range from daily forecasts for district level planning to seasonal forecasts for national resources allocation and planning. Daily forecasts are common, but seasonal forecasts for fire managers are rare. This paper describes a seasonal fire severity forecast built around a seasonal integration of a global weather model. Fire indices are computed from the forecasted weather parameters, and the indices in turn are used in a statistical model to predict fire severity measures on a 100 km grid across the contiguous United States. Development of the seasonal fire severity forecast is ongoing, but details of the current forecasting process will be presente