Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - Smoke Impact Report - King Fire - Eldorado County

Prepared by Gary M. Curcio, (IPAFES)

A)     Key Points for Consideration:  

• Fire has burned approximately 12,781 acres as of 09/16/14 @ 1:13 am

• Fire increased approximately 8,871 acres

• Smoke emissions for yesterday, September 15^th were projected the same for today September 16th. This is based on forecasted fire weather and fire behavior projections. There is an excellent potential for fire growth today. Fire growth concerns are for the N & NE sides of the King Fire.

• Wind direction is expected to shift from E to SW by midday and should alleviate smoke issues to communities west of the fire as smoke travels NE towards Reno, NV.

• IR showed continued interior burning and active burning with intense heat on the NW-N-NE sides of the fire’s perimeter. These two areas of intense heat are approximately 3 ½ miles apart. This distance can easily generate two separate smoke columns. See Figure 1

• Blue-Sky runs follow the graphics showing the potential areas of smoke impact. It is displayed for key selected times influence by the diurnal pattern and wind speeds.

• Please review the following Particulate Matter 2.5 tables.  These display the 3 hour running and 24 hour running averages for PM 2.5 plotted with hourly observations. These summaries can serve as a guide to personal activities.  Using persistence and the information from these tables, they can assist in personal mitigation for timed or planned activities the next day. 

Figure1.  On the top Modis observed heat signatures at 3:00 pm September 16th. These areas of intense                              heat extend beyond the  NW and NE sides of the fire’s perimeter as determined by the earlier infra-red                                flight. On the bottom HMS King Fire’s Smoke Plume at 12:35 pm Tuesday.

Figure 2 A, B, C, D: Outputs from the Blue-Sky 2km model projecting smoke concentration at the surface for Sept 16^th at 5:40 pm tonight (2A). 

Figure2B shows the modeled BlueSky prediction for surface smoke impact for September 17^th  at 0:41 am.

Figure 2C shows the modeled BlueSky prediction for surface smoke impact for September 17^th  at 6:15 am.

Figure2D shows the modeled BlueSky prediction for surface smoke impact for September 17^th  at 8:36 am.