When Smokey the Bear told everyone that “Only you can prevent forest fires” he wasn’t wrong. At least in this case. This fire in New Mexico, 10 miles west of Reserve, began as an illegal abandoned campfire. Most fire have two causes, lightning strikes and humans. This completely preventable fire has already burned 49,449 acres and is now 82% contained. However, in the next few days, weather conditions will coalesce to bring what could be dangerous conditions and possible fire growth. A strong upper high will be building over the coming days. This pattern will lead to dry conditions with temperatures 5-8 degrees above normal and relative humidity falling back into the single digits. Winds will be on the light side through the end of the week. On Saturday, the upper high will breakdown bringing gusty west winds which could lead to near critical conditions. No precipitation is expected during the forecast period. All conditions that could cause fire spread.
NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the fire and smoke blowing from it on June 21, 2018 with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument. Actively burning areas (hot spots), detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. Each hot spot is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by plumes of smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for fire. NASA image courtesy of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) project. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from Inciweb.