Day in the Life of a Fire Weather Forecaster

So what exactly occurs during a fire weather forecaster shift during the fire season? We are going to break it down for you. Obviously the day could be way more/less busy if we have ongoing fires or the weather is quiet, but this is just to give you an idea of how the day is laid out!


7:00 AM - The shift officially begins with a briefing from the overnight forecaster. This is our time to ask what changes were made to the forecast, how have the models been trending, and if there were any equipment issues overnight.


7:30 AM  - Look at new incoming forecast model data, review fire reports available from the National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC) and prepare for upcoming conference calls and briefings. 

 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM - We participate in a couple of conference calls with our fire partners, which include the Southern California Geographical Coordination Center (aka SoCal GACC), the Northern CA GACC, and with the Great Basin GACC. These conference calls are where we talk to the local fuels experts and fire intelligence folks to determine how bad the fuels are and what the fire potential will be for the given day. This is also our chance as weather forecasters to inform them of our weather concerns for the day or the next few days.



After we have completed coordinating with our local fire agencies and partners, we lead our own call to brief folks on the upcoming weather for the next week or so. We focus on big ticket items like strong gusty winds with low humidity and/or dry lightning events, which are both weather events that would warrant a Red Flag Warning to be issued. For more information on Red Flag Warnings check out this brief video.


10:00 - 2:00PM  - For a good part of the day, the fire weather forecaster will spend their time looking at the model data and making adjustments to the forecast which includes weather elements such as, Lightning Activity Level, Chance of Wetting Rain, Haines Index, Winds and Wind Gusts, and also Relative Humidity. These are all crucial elements to fire weather and how a fire might behave once it has started.

2:00 - 3:00 PM - During the afternoon, the fire weather forecaster may be dealing with incoming spot weather requests, which are specialized forecasts for prescribed burns, hazmat incidents, or even wildfires! These forecasts are unique to the incident and are submitted to NWS Reno by local law enforcement or the fire agencies, to get a localized forecast for the wildfire, search and rescue team, or a hazmat event.
Pine Haven Fire 2012 - Reno, Nevada
3:00 - 4:00 PM - The end of the shift consists of completing or creating drafts of all spot weather forecasts, writing a fire log to track what changes were made to the fire forecast, and also sending out the fire weather products, including: Fire Weather Planning Forecast and the Fire Weather Dispatch forecasts for northern California.

That about sums it up for the fire weather shift, without getting into too many meticulous details. Much of the information that we put out is available at the NWS Reno webpage or on the NWS Reno Fire Weather webpage (seen below). If you have any questions feel free to email us.

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