Horse Fire XIII

The map at right has the latest MODIS paints — none! Some of the older paints have completely fallen off ('cause they’re older than 48 hours). But on the last pass — almost directly overhead, too — the MODIS imaging didn’t find a single pixel of thermal signature for fire. The most likely reason for this is that there were no large fires left burning, just isolated smaller fires (these don’t produce enough heat to cross the MODIS threshold).

I called CDF, and their recording is now sounding positively chipper. In particular, it mentions no threat of any kind from the western flank of the fire (the one closest to us). Yahoo! They do talk about some remaining risk at Secret Canyon and Lake Morena (the orange shaded areas), but mostly they talked about containment, the need for 20 miles of perimeter construction, and the vast array of men and equipment on the scene.

We’re going to take off on a reconnoiter; if we learn anything new we’ll post within a few hours.

Horse Fire XII

Just got off the phone with a real, live — and informed — CDF person. He reports that the brunt of the fight on the Horse Fire is now on its western flank (closest to us), and that so far the firefighters there have managed to keep it all east of Lyons Valley Road, and south of Japatul Road. That’s great news for us!

Not so great news for us: the weather service is forecasting that the winds today will be toward the southwest, but light (definitely NOT a Santa Ana condition!). This would have the fire tending in our direction, with the uphill slopes it would first run into heading straight toward us.

We’re hoping those firefighters continue to prevail, and keep that horse’s ass of a fire over on the other side of the road!

The most recent MODIS data is now 12 hours old, so almost irrelevant. The next pass of a MODIS satellite is Terra, which will fly over in about 90 minutes, about 800 miles to the east. It’s just over 400 miles high, so that will give it a very oblique view (about 25 degrees). Assuming its sensors see that wide a path (I’m not sure about this), then it should have a great view of the eastern flanks of Gaskill and Lawson Peaks…

Horse Fire XI

We just got an update to the WF-HMS data. This is the data that is generated by a human analyst at NOAA, who takes into consideration all the available data (including imagery).

The green splotch, as usual, is where our home is located. This is zoomed in to show only the southwestern flank of the Horse Fire. The data of interest here are the small red and yellow dots — the red dots indicate fires located by the analyst within the past 24 hours, yellow dots are between 24 and 48 hours old. There are several new red dots, including one right smack in the middle of the community of Carveacre (that’s the dot by itself in the grey area, on the northwest side of the visible fire area). There are also more red dots in the area just to the north and to the east of Lake Barrett.

If this data is accurate, our hearts go out to the folks who live in Carveacre…

The areas closest to our home, with the big one kilometer diameter red MODIS splotches, doesn’t have any red dots at all — we’ll take that as good news.

And we can’t help but be amused by the red dot located right in the middle of Lake Barrett. That’s a good reminder of the “coarseness” of these data — the small red dot implies a much higher precision than is actually present. It’s entirely possible that the red dot in Carveacre is actually misplaced, much like the one in Lake Barrett. We sure hope so…

Horse Fire X

We got a bit of new satellite data last night, and with this data alone you would now think that the major part of the fire is the part nearest our home. Yikes!

On the upper map, at right, the green splotch is where our home is, and the hand-drawn orange areas are where the verbal CDF reports say the fire is. For the southwest flank (the part nearest our home) and the southeast flank (the part nearest Lake Morena), the verbal reports jibe well with the satellite data. For the northern flank, all we have are the verbal CDF reports — in a dozen or so satellite passes, we’ve never seen a single pixel of data concerning heat or flares in Secret Canyon. This makes me wonder if the verbal CDF reports are just plain wrong, and the fire is actually south of Secret Canyon, where those black MODIS paints, and the two active WF-HMS red dots are…

CDF reported late last night (after we went to bed) that the fire was now 15% contained and had burned 16,384 acres. I’m not sure how they estimate containment. My guess would be the percentage of the perimeter that they have a secure firebreak around, but that’s just a guess. The burned acreage jumps right out at a geek like me: 16,384 is an even power of two (2^14, or 128^2) — a frequently encountered number in the world of a programmer who’s familiar with machine-level operations. It seems somehow unlikely that the estimated acreage accidentally came out as such a number. More likely is the estimation algorithm is being exposed here, somehow…

The lower map is really just for your interest. It’s the NOAA near-realtime map with every reporting option turned on (and a legend visible). The red dots are the results of human analysis; all the other dots are automated systems — algorithms running on sensor data.

Until yesterday, CDF was reporting that the cause of the Horse Fire was “under investigation”. Early lamestream media reports said it was an illegal immigrant’s campfire, but they soon backed off of that statement. Now the CDF is reporting the cause as an “escaped campfire”. So far as I know, the area where the fire started doesn’t have any campgrounds. It’s definitely an area subject to heavy illegal immigrant traffic. So I’d say the odds are that the initial report was correct — an illegal immigrant had a campfire that got out of control. But I can’t be 100% sure; I suppose it could be some loon back there camping in the National Forest, legitimately.

We’ve had a fair number of forest fires and brush fires started by illegal immigrants' campfires in recent years — I’ve even found the remains of such fires on my own property, which is kind of frightening (I’ve never seen an illegal immigrant on my property).

Have to wonder though, what anyone was doing with a campfire at 6 AM that particular Sunday. My weather system recorded the temperature at that moment as 90 F — more like air conditioner weather than campfire!