Reading the Tea Leaves Season 4 Episode 3 - An Overview of the Fuel Situation in California

California experienced one of the most epic winters on record. The added moisture helped temporarily alleviate some drought concerns and gave rise to a bumper crop of herbaceous fuel. However, the large snowpack and wet spring have also compressed the fire season and, so far, the wildfire situation in California has been slow to develop. But grasses have mostly cured and other factors are beginning to influence the chances for wildfire this year.

In this webcast, Research Ecologist Dr. Matt Reeves analyzes rangeland fuel conditions across California by evaluating the main factors of fuel amount and type, proximity to larger diameter fuel, drought conditions, and level of curing leading to senescent grasses in our simple but transparent hotspot algorithm. All previous recordings are located on the Reading the Tea Leaves page.

Projections are based on Reeves' Fuelcasting system - a component of the Rangeland Production Monitoring Service that provides projections of expected fuel conditions this grazing season.