With the Camp Fire having passed, thoughts are now turning to how best to summarize and streamline future warnings for wildfires. While data is available, the multitude of sources from which it is derived, and the different thresholds each organization can set, makes assembling a single agreed upon set of criteria challenging.
The Washington Post assembled a list of information for potential threats posed by wildfires:
- The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, which issues outlooks a week in advance, detailing predictions on things like humidity, wind speed, temperatures, and ignition by lightning strike
- Local National Weather Service offices, which can issue fire watches or fire warnings, based on their own evaluated thresholds
- Weather Service Wireless Emergency Alerts, which can issue phone alerts based on the discretion of local emergency officials
- The Emergency Alert System, based on the request of local officials, supported by inputs from meteorologists
- National Weather Service Satellites, which can identify potential hot spots, and flow in information to meteorologists to model likely fire behavior.
With all these sources, and the mix between local and national organizations, efforts will be needed to smooth out the process behind alerts to make any issued warnings both timely and informative.
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