As wildfires rage, forecasters test new way to warn people near flames

Days before a historic spate of wildfires in the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma in February, local meteorologists had been training on a new way to warn people about fast-spreading fires - with a system that can quickly detect emerging threats and tell people where the flames are headed. During that outbreak, 41 wildfires tore through 1.4 million acres in less than two days, including the Smokehouse Creek Fire, which grew into the largest in Texas history.

As relentless winds spread flames through tinder-dry grass and brush, the National Weather Service issued 20 “Fire Warnings,” alerts meant to let people know about fires’ locations and where they were moving. More than 400 structures were destroyed and two people were killed in those fires, though the warnings may have helped prevent further impact.

This week, massive wildfires are burning across the West, forcing quick evacuations as danger grows and as the most intense stretch of fire season still lies ahead. With a changing climate driving more aggressive fires, weather officials have been working to find new ways to warn people when those intensifying flames are nearing.

[Firefighters get some help from cooler temperatures after California’s largest wildfire explodes]

The new system used in the February fires is only available in parts of Texas and Oklahoma, though it’s one the National Weather Service hopes to expand across the country. It gives forecasters a central role in alerting people that fires have ignited and may be nearby, whereas existing alerts mostly warn people about the weather that can spread a fire. The warnings are being evaluated by the Weather Service, however, and it could be some time before they are available in regions like the fire-prone West.

Still, the hope is that they will deliver lifesaving information about rapidly evolving blazes in real time - something that has been absent during recent, repeated wildfire disasters in the United States.

“From my own experience as a Weather Service forecaster, I would want to have an option of being able to alert people,” said Zach Tolby, director and lead scientist at NOAA’s Fire Weather Testbed. “In the past, we just didn’t have the right product.”

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New, streamlined warnings

The warnings are meant to provide quick notification of a dangerous wildfire that might require people to soon evacuate and are reserved for the most threatening, high-end fire weather days.

“It fills an important gap between when a newly emerging wildfire starts and the time it takes to get an evacuation [order] out,” Tolby said.

Advances in satellite technology, which can detect wildfires before 911 calls come in, are giving forecasters a birds-eye view of unfolding blazes and their intensity.

On dangerous fire weather days, meteorologists monitor satellite data and notify fire analysts on the ground if a potentially serious wildfire is detected. If the fire agency considers a fire a threat, it will give a green light for a warning. Information about the fire’s location and movement is then broadcast to the public and emergency officials, along with any evacuation instructions that may follow from local authorities.

Meteorologists still can’t issue fire warnings unilaterally - the go-ahead must come from agencies on the ground. And only certain local officials - like a sheriff’s office - have the authority to issue evacuation orders. So, the new warnings require close coordination between meteorologists, emergency officials, and state and local fire agencies in what’s called an “Integrated Warning Team.”

In June, NOAA’s new Fire Weather Testbed looked closely at the agency’s fire detection and warning capabilities and tested how the new system performed during simulated fire scenarios, like Colorado’s destructive Marshall Fire in December 2021. It brought together meteorologists and fire officials from several states to coordinate plans, as well as social scientists to advise on how the warnings should be communicated. And they evaluated how well NOAA’s satellite-based detection software - called the Next Generation Fire System - tracks a fire’s movement over the landscape.

“It’s a very challenging time frame when you have a dangerous fire moving into a neighborhood, threatening lives and property,” Tolby said. “We need to make sure that this process is well established before we start using it.”

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An escalating threat

The new warnings originated in the southern Plains and have been tested and updated there since 2022. But they aren’t yet available outside of Texas and Oklahoma.

“Just like everywhere else, the fire threat has been escalating here over the last two decades or so,” said Todd Lindley, the science and operations officer at the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla., who worked to develop the warnings. “In fact, [the Smokehouse Creek Fire] was the third fire episode that we’ve had in the last two decades that has burned over a million acres in shortly over 24 hours.”

After the 2018 Camp Fire in California - the deadliest in state history - meteorologists in Oklahoma decided that if a similar fire happened in their region, they wanted to be able to quickly alert the public and emergency responders.

Although an older product called a “fire warning” has been available since 2006, it was not used in recent devastating wildfires, including the Camp Fire, the Marshall Fire or last summer’s deadly fire in Maui. Yet such alerts are needed more than ever, as climate change-fueled wildfire disasters are striking year-round and in unusual places, with residents fleeing the flames with little notice.

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Keeping up with the worst fires

Improved warnings are important but could also create a false sense of security among emergency responders, said Sarah McCaffrey, a retired research social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service.

“Most of the fires that are deadly - they’re deadly because from the moment of ignition to when they affect a lot of people is a very short time period,” she said. “There can be an underlying assumption that time will be on the side of the people making the warnings.”

There is also no guarantee people will receive a warning, even if one is issued quickly.

“Odds are pretty good that people won’t get a warning for a lot of different reasons,” she said. “Particularly with fires, they often burn through cellphone towers or burn down the telephone lines or the electricity goes out.”

Still, McCaffrey said providing information on where a fire is moving is critical, and the improved coordination between meteorologists, fire agencies and local officials is also valuable.

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Will warnings work in other regions?

McCaffrey said she is not surprised the updated warnings are coming out of the Plains states, where grass fires move quickly but population density is relatively low.

“That’s somewhere you could have the lead time to make all of this make sense and be worthwhile,” she said.

There are real questions about whether the warnings will translate to other regions of the country, like California, Hawaii and the Eastern U.S., where terrain, vegetation and population patterns are much different. That will require more research and scientific vetting, Lindley and Tolby said, as well as training for meteorologists and officials.

“That takes time because it’s been a long time since the National Weather Service issued a really new warning product like this,” Tolby said.