Where do I get weather and wind data to put into FARSITE?
A16. This kind of depends on what you are using FARSITE for. There are 3 general uses for FARSITE: 1) fire reconstruction (past fires), 2) fire projection (active fires), and 3) fire planning (potential fires). You should use observed weather data for #1, either from field observers or from a representative RAWS station. For #2, we need to generate them by hand — just like a horse race, we can’t get the results ahead of time, only an expectation or forecast. So, for a short term fire projection, we will probably want to use base our Weather (.WTR) and Wind (.WND) Files on a real forecast for the fire locality. For medium to long term projections (beyond the forecast) we will need to create weather and wind scenarios based on the concerns of the decision makers on the fire, run all of them and compare them to see what the differences are. For #3 we can use climatological information to devise conditions and scenarios that are of interest to the project. This might mean that we use NFDR
Related Questions
- Can the user choose which RAWS to use for weather and wind data for Basic Fire Behavior (BFB) and Short-Term Fire Behavior (STFB) analyses?
- Is it possible to get data on the average prevailing wind direction by month for a given weather station?
- Where do I get weather and wind data to put into FARSITE?
