'Perfect Storm' for Wildfires
The Houston Chronicle has printed an interview with Mark Stanford, chief of fire operations for the Texas Forest Service. They discuss the large grass fires that hit Texas recently. This is my favorite bit:
Q: What produced Sunday's history-making wildfire? Why was it so bad?A: I would describe it as a perfect storm for extreme fire. The weather conditions and the condition of the vegetation came together in a nexus that created a force of nature much like a hurricane or tornado. These are natural disasters that are truly beyond our capability to do anything about them. The fuels, the grasses, were critically dry, and you had a combination of single-digit humidity and winds gusting to 60 mph. Our models that morning predicted flames spreading at 6 mph with 50-foot flame lengths, which is the same as a four-story building. By 1 o'clock in the afternoon, that is what we had.
Emphasis is mine.
Fifty foot flame length off of grass is some really serious fire behavior. No wonder they weren't able to stop the fires.
