Fire Weather, a new approach

[HansR]

And for those who did not look: these days just before Easter have minor warnings going on all over Europe and we had already some wildfires here in the Netherlands, 200 km south of Wagenborgen (image) in heath on dry sandy soils and similar in Meyenheim and Saint Bonnet-Le-Troncy (image). Interesting early FWI development in Europe.

[HansR]

10 days later, the area of Wagenborgen has the strange situation of an extremely dry spring. Several fires have already ignited close by.
Who would have thought the swamp area we now call the Netherlands would ever be a wildfire risk area, more so or equal to the stations in forested area's in France and Spain.
Interesting as it happens.

Note btw. that kocher.es and Tilburg-Reeshof also have FWIcalc side by side with pwsFWI. That gives an interesting view (one needs to compare with pwsFWI and FWI btw , not with FFWI DC or Angstrom or alike).

[HansR]

And the fires continue as today's development shows an evacuated village of roughly 4000 people because of smoke danger near the German border. This truly a strange situation which I cannot remember ever happening in the Netherlands. OK, it's 250 km south from where I live and almost in Germany but still . The other burning area is 30 km north from there. It is heath fields on old bog area's, normally very wet but drying quickly. We do it partly ourselves because of lowered groundwater (for agriculture).

Unfortunately there is no pwsFWI around although the nearest stations have a raised level of danger. It would have been nice to see the actual danger level.
Hope the fire is quenched soon.

[HansR]

In the mean time temperatures in the arid area of Spain are steadily rising and the pwsFWI in Sangonera la Verde is reaching the extreme values. If compared to the EFFIS (The European Forest Fire Information System) we see that both overlap nicely, again a confirmation of pwsFWI. Remarkable is that EFFIS uses six warning levels within the system (which is basically the Canadian FWI) with which they actually follow the Australian system. Having seen this, it might be useful for @meteosangonera to actually go to a six level warning.

[meteosangonera]

It's already very hot in much of southern Spain.

In my opinion, the worrying thing about this year is that we have had a very rainy winter and spring, which has favoured the growth of vegetation.

With the decrease in rainfall this summer, all that vegetation will dry out, providing a lot of fuel for possible fires.

Let's hope not.

[HansR]

Yes, if it remains like this during all summer it may become dangerous.

With respect to the wet winter and spring, there is also a positive thing because it will delay fires during the initial phase of the fireseason as the strategy of trees and plants of the arid zone is usually closing the skin openings (stomata) to prevent excessive evaporation and they remain moist on the inside. But if drought continuous that won't help in the end. Your regions history record is not good from that point of view

[hills]

Wow, I just checked in to see how you northerners were going. It sounds like our extraordinary fire season last season has moved up there! Stay safe!!

[HansR]

Wow, I just checked in to see how you northerners were going. It sounds like our extraordinary fire season last season has moved up there! Stay safe!!

Thanks for checking and the support. We will see what we're heading at, it indeed is a very dry spring/start of summer.
But having said that, I don't think it will be as bad as in Australia last year:

• We don't have Eucalyptus
• The contiguous forested areas are smaller.
• We deal with it differently, maybe that's a difference too - would need to study that.

Looking at the Mediterranean area which would be most susceptible, there are considerable large forested area's but incomparable with the NSW stretch of the Great Divide range.

BTW: while I am at it, yesterday I wrote a blog on a recently started project : PyroLife.
If you like hearing 45 minute talks on fire related issues, check it out