{"id":138655,"date":"2026-07-12T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/incident-meteorologists-keep-firefighters-safe-by-tracking-complex-weather-patterns-that-fuel-wil\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:00:00","slug":"incident-meteorologists-keep-firefighters-safe-by-tracking-complex-weather-patterns-that-fuel-wil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/incident-meteorologists-keep-firefighters-safe-by-tracking-complex-weather-patterns-that-fuel-wil\/","title":{"rendered":"Incident meteorologists keep firefighters safe by tracking complex weather patterns that fuel wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sometimes fires create their own weather<\/div>\n

\"Incident
Incident meteorologists keep firefighters safe by tracking complex fire weather that fuels blazes. (Courtesy of Westminster Fire Department)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When wildfire tears through the landscape and teams are called in, firefighters are the first response team that comes to mind. While firefighters may be the ones on the front lines, the personnel behind the scenes help keep them safe while creating strategies to fight fire in the most efficient way possible.<\/p>\n

Wildland firefighters battling the Ferris Fire, and other fires wreaking havoc in the West, are relying on specialized weather forecasts that account for how drought, wind, heat, thunderstorms and other weather interact with the terrain and influence fire behavior. This work is done by incident meteorologists from the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

Incident meteorologists are dispatched to major fires to provide weather forecasts while monitoring satellite and radar, assessing wind speeds, tracking potential thunderstorms that could produce lightning or erratic winds, and delivering updates to operations and firefighters day and night.<\/p>\n

The nighttime shifts are especially essential, as the darkness prevents firefighters and other personnel from knowing how weather is changing. Firefighter safety is a big part of an incident meteorologist\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we’re not doing the forecast, we are watching satellite, we’re watching radar and anything that could adversely affect the firefighters. If weather strays from our forecast, we need to let them know. Storms are one of those things,\u201d Rick Hluchan, incident meteorologist working the Ferris Fire, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this sounds crazy, but give me a hot, dry, windy day any time because I can forecast that. There’s nothing about that that’s going to change through the day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thunderstorms are unpredictable in so far as when they form and what direction an outflow may be pushing. There could be 10 mph wind gusts or 50 mph wind blasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cTracking all of that,and then getting word out to the firefighters and operations is really important so they can take action based on what I’m giving them,\u201d Hluchan said.<\/p>\n

At times when the meteorologist needs to sleep, they call the local office charged with tracking the forecast. For Montezuma County, that is Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI let them know my concerns for the night, and I give them some trigger points, (like) if showers or storms get to maybe 15 or 20 miles from the fire, give me a call, wake me up and then I will get a message sent out to what we call communications, where the radio is and then they relay that message out to everybody on the fire. That happened several times last night. Happened several times the night before,\u201d Hluchan said.<\/p>\n

Extensive training and flexibility is required for the role, with these meteorologists traveling to many different places across the county while responding to incidents in varying terrain and climates.<\/p>\n

Hluchan said the low snowfall this winter, which made up only 12% of normal snow seen in the Rockies, combined with early spring melt and minimal rainfall created critically dry vegetation that allowed for the Ferris Fire, and other regional fires, to grow so rapidly. Lightening strike ignited the fires, with strong winds and low relative humidity allowing the flames to power through the dry fuels. The high temperatures also exacerbated the situation, putting extra stress on firefighting crews, leading to mitigation efforts being taken to make sure firefighters stay safe and hydrated.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy early spring, we were already in early summerlike conditions, something that’s not normal at all,\u201d Hluchan said.<\/p>\n

These conditions are compounded by the difficult terrain being encountered in canyons like the Dolores River Canyon.<\/p>\n

One fascinating aspect of fire weather is a large fire\u2019s ability to generate its own weather. Hluchan has seen a fire create its own thunderstorm, complete with lightning, but he said it is not common. The most common, according to Brian Swanson, long-term analyst trainee, is for the intense heat to form a \u201cplume-dominated fire column\u201d that rises like smoke in a chimney, creating its own wind patterns.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re likely going to notice the fire standing up more,\u201d Hluchan said. \u201cSo with the hot conditions, and a little bit less wind, it creates what we call a more plume-dominated fire column … I’m sure you’ve seen pictures and videos of volcanoes. They create lightning, that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n

Under the right conditions, these plumes can produce pyrocumulus or pyrocumulonimbus clouds that, in some cases, can create its own lightening and storms, though this is not as common as the basic cloud effects.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Ferris Fire developed a plume-like cloud of smoke last week. (Bailey Duran\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Swanson said that when someone says, \u201cThe fire is creating its own weather,\u201d it typically means that the fire is so intense that it starts drawing in the air from around it, which creates wind that isn\u2019t the \u201ctraditional winds that we see day to day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf all week long we are having a traditional wind, the fire is moving one way, and then we get a plume-dominated fire where the fire starts drawing in more air, then the fire might move in a different direction because of that,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n

Smoke from distant fires can also influence nearby firefighting efforts by providing shading that moderates temperatures. In this instance, the Ferris Fire affected the Gold Mountain Fire near Ouray.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur fire actually got active one day last week and shaded the Gold Mountain Fire,\u201d Hluchan said. \u201cWe got a northeast wind which pushed all of our smoke directly over the Gold Mountain Fire, so they had moderated fire activity for a day or two. So, we\u2019re just helping each other out here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hluchan noted that rainfall is predicted for Monday and Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could see a tenth of an inch to a quarter of an inch, which doesn\u2019t sound like much, but it\u2019s going to help nonetheless,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to put the fire out, but it\u2019s going to moderate everything. That is our hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hluchan became an incident meteorologist after the incident meteorologist in his office began to retire. Now, he\u2019s been one for five years and is dispatched all over the country for fires.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn’t matter where the fire’s at. We can be dispatched anywhere,\u201d Hluchan, who is from Texas, said. \u201cWe\u2019re trained for any type of weather, terrain, all of that, and we can go anywhere, whether it be Alaska, Hawaii, California, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to be from that location. I was in Nebraska earlier this year. I’ve been to Washington, Oregon, California, all over the West.\u201d<\/p>\n

bduran@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes fires create their own weather Incident meteorologists keep firefighters safe by tracking complex fire weather that fuels blazes. (Courtesy of Westminster Fire Department) When wildfire tears through the landscape and teams are called in, firefighters are the first response team that comes to mind. While firefighters may be the ones on the front lines, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1820,837,28,60,29,6419,414,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-138655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-dh-trueanthem","tag-dolores-county","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-tj-trueanthem","tag-weather","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138655"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=138655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}