NOAA/National Weather Service's Chief Learning Office United States Department of Commerce
Commerce Learning Center
Fire Weather

PCU 3: Make the Warning Decision


Maintain knowledge of all relevant policies, integrate all relevant information and apply situational awareness to make appropriate warning decisions.

Job Task Skills and Knowledge:

  • Knowledge of Red Flag Warning criteria
  • Compare synoptic and mesoscale situation with "critical fire weather patterns"
  • Obtain fuels and fire danger data from multiple sources
  • Identify areas needing Red Flag Warnings based on weather and fire danger input
  • Coordinate with fire weather partners to discuss fuels and ongoing fire situations to determine if a watch or warning is needed
  • Coordinate with other, WFOs, IMETs and GACC meteorologists to determine temporal and coverage details of warnings and critical messages to communicate
  • Recognize challenges to effective team decision making
  • Develop a work environment that provides strong fire weather situational awareness
  • Utilize situational awareness to support warning decisions
  • Issue effective products and support warning products with supplemental graphical products, briefings and other communication methods


Instructional Components:

  • Assessing Fire Danger (COMET - Advanced Fire Weather Forecasters Course)
  • Multispectral Satellite Applications: Monitoring the Wildland Fire Cycle (COMET)
  • S290 Intermediate Wildland Fire Behavior Course (units 10,11)
  • Identify the Critical Fire Weather Pattern given a series of weather charts. (exercise)
  • Given a series of weather observations and a fire weather zone, identify critical changes in the weather or conditions that may require an update to products (exercise)
  • Based on fuels information, identify areas that would combine with very low humidity and windy conditions to create a critical fire weather situation (exercise)
  • Determine areas where critical weather conditions line up with fuels to support a Red Flag Warning. (difference between previous exercise is that this one requires fuels analysis, previous exercise does not, meant to reflect the nuance between fuels and weather when one or the other is at an extreme) (exercise)
  • Given 4 different sets of data, both fuels and weather, indicate which days you would issue a Red Flag Warning and which days you would not. (exercise)
  • Introduction to Fire Weather Situational Awareness of the entire fire picture (fuels/weather/fire activity/land management agency prepardness/restrictions)
  • Coordination of Fire Weather with other NWS and non NWS Meteorologists
  • Critical Fire Weather Patterns: synoptic and mesoscale analysis and exercises. (Old 591 course combined with S495 elements and incorporating the latest information from JFSP Publication "Synthesis of Knowledge of Extreme Fire Behavior)
  • Red Flag Decision Making: Introduction to multielement decision making (instructor led distance learning course, to be developed)

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