WindNinja update: Version 3.12.0

As the world’s leading wildland fire research organization, the USDA Forest Service develops and maintains a number of applications and tools to help manage wildland fires and improve firefighter safety. WindNinja is an established, open source high-resolution wind model developed for wildland fire applications. It is used on nearly every large fire incident in the United States. WindNinja is embedded in numerous operational wildland fire applications, including the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS), the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS), FlamMap, FSPro, Prometheus, and Wildfire Analyst. It is used for incident support around the world as well as for numerous non-fire applications, including hydrological modeling, avalanche forecasting, and wind energy. On average, more than 3,000 users in 70 countries perform 7 million WindNinja runs each year.

WindNinja is developed and maintained by a team of researchers at the Forest Service Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. This work includes fixing bugs, incorporating new features, providing end user support, developing documentation and tutorials, producing and distributing new versions, conducting trainings and demonstrations, performing model evaluation work, and leading research efforts to expand and improve the representation of physical processes and computational performance of the model. 

Version 3.12.0 is available now on the WindNinja webpage. It incorporates several new features and provides numerous bug fixes. Some of the key updates include:

• Added the ability to initialize simulations with pastcasts from historical High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model. The historical HRRR forecasts can be downloaded by WindNinja.
• Added several new weather model forecast options for initialization: Rapid Refresh (RAP) extended forecasts, HRRR extended forecasts, and the National Blend of Models (NBM).
• Improved the SRTM DEM downloads.
• Upgraded Landscape file downloads to LANDFIRE 2023 version 2.4.0.

The full list of changes can be found here.