Another tool that gives land managers the ability to interact with the digital database is the Activity Planner. This tool allows one to enter various weather thresholds in order to determine potential “burn windows” through the next 7 days using the following interface set up for each NWS office.
There are six defaulted parameters but drop down menus allow for several other choices.
For location, it is likely that land managers will most often utilize the Latitude/Longitude interface.
However, towns in the area may also be selected,
or the location may be selected by clicking on the map.
The initial chart will give a general sense of if and when any potential burn windows might occur in the next week. Values within in the selected threshold ranges are indicated by a solid bar for each parameter. Therefore, the time periods may be scanned vertically to determine if each parameter has a bar for in that period. Any value outside of the range, either too high or too low, will show up as a gap in the bar. Putting the mouse over any time period will yield the specific values under the chart.
After this initial look, there are a couple other ways to more closely investigate potential burn windows. Clicking anywhere on the chart will yield a tabular view of many of the parameters in the digital database.
Once this table is produced, it can easily be adjusted for desired parameters and time periods.
Another useful way to look at specific values is to produce 48-hr Element Meteograms by clicking on the link of this title at the lower right hand corner of the chart.
These charts provide a good view of how the parameters are expected to trend over the next week.
CAUTION: While this could be a valuable planning tool out a week or so, the Activity Planner is not intended to replace a spot forecast. If forecast precision is required on the day of the project, the user should request a spot forecast for the site. A National Weather Service meteorologist can then fine tune these numbers based on the site characteristics (aspect, steepness, position on slope, etc.) and local observations to develop a more representative forecast.
The Activity Planner can be used in a similar fashion to obtain long lead times on potentially critical wildfire thresholds such as maximum temperature and minimum relative humidity.
Following are links to each office's Activity Planner: