Event (1): Hot fire on lee-side of hill, lee wind-field full of smoke.

Air Observer or Field Observer

Photo: Wayne West, tendered to ACT Coronial into the 2003 Fires. 148.74° -35.30° looking NNW at about 12:00 AEDST 18th January, 2003.

In this photograph taken on Blackfellows Flat on the Goodradigbee River, the wind is blowing strongly from the left to the right. Rather than moving downslope to the right, the fire is circulating in the lee-slope eddy and filling the entire slope up to the break-in-slope at the top. This is diagnostic.
Channelling is also dragging the entire system towards the observer. Note that in other circumstances channelling might push the fire laterally in the opposite direction, away from the observer. The leading “lateral edge” is characterised by spotfires, noticable in the photo from their dark grey smoke plumes. The main smoke is, by contrast, of a somewhat orange colour. This is diagnostic.
Fire is spotting onto the entire landscape downwind, to the right, for some kilometres.
This landscape-scale ignition pattern dictates that a field observer seeing this should immediately seek safe egress.

Implications

Phenomenon	Urgency	Indicated Red Flag Warning
Dynamic channelling	3	6) Channelling event

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This material arises from work carried out by the HighFire Risk Project.

Material prepared by R. McRae September 2009.