MesoWest Surface Weather Map NESDIS Fire Product Overlays

MesoWest Surface Weather Maps provide access in a convenient and visually inutitive way to current and retrospective surface weather data stored in the MesoWest database. The most recent observations within a specified time frame ending at a specific time are displayed (the default setting is the most recent observation at each station within the past hour, but the user can view conditions back to January 1997 within time windows of 15 minutes to 12 hours).

GEOMAC Active Fire Perimeter Overlays

Boundaries of large active fires are aggregated by GEOMAC. These boundaries may not be updated for several days. See the GEOMAC documentation for further details.

The NESDIS Fire Product Overlays

Graphical overlays of hot spots and smoke plumes from NESDIS are now available. See the NESDIS fire detection program for more details. According to the NESDIS Fire Detection program, the information on fire position should be used as general guidance and for strategic planning. Tactical decisions, such as the activation of a response to fight these fires or evacuation decisions should not be made without other information to corroborate the fire's existence and specific location. Users should note:

• 1) The HMS product depicts fires for approximately a calendar day at a given location. It is created and updated by a satellite analyst between 1pm and 11pm Eastern time. After 11pm, the analysis is fine-tuned using late evening satellite imagery as time permits. The final product for the previous day is "completed" for the archive prior to the beginning of the next day's fire shift, usually by about 600 or 700 AM Eastern time.
• 2) Widespread and/or persistent cloudiness may prevent fire and smoke detection in areas.
• 3) The fire sizes depicted in the product are primarily determined by the field of view of the satellite instrument, or the resolution of the analysis tool. The satellite derived fire points should not be used to estimate specific fire perimeters or determine the exact location of a fire due to navigational uncertainties.
• 4) The time stamp and time range associated with the fire points do not infer when the fire was first detected or how long it has been burning.
• 5) Smoke areas are manually added by the fire analyst based on visible satellite imagery, with no information provided on what level in the atmosphere the smoke is actually present.
• 6) The assigned smoke concentration values represent an estimate of the smoke density and should be interpreted as the mid point in a range of values that the smoke contour depicts.