Soberanes Fire MODIS data — 1330 7/29

The noonish MODIS pass found new activity:

Unfortunately, the radiant heat data set has not yet been updated, so we can’t tell how active the new spots are. It looks like most of the new activity is in the southeast, with one hot spot well to the east of the former fire perimeter. There is also new activity near White Rock, and in Rancho San Carlos. there are other now hot spots in the interior of the southern fire perimeter.

Here’s a view of the eastern edge of the southern fire, looking towards north Carmel Valley Village:

The big question in my mind is the long term strategy about the southern fire. Right now, it’s a long way from many structures, and I could understand leaving it alone and preparing to make a stand to the east, west, and south. From what I can see one set of fire lines has already been overrun, and I don’t know which of the remaining line to the east are intended to be the ones that will be heavily defended, and if there’s a plan to connect them up. I’ll be looking around on-line for that information.

OK, after some poking around, I found a map of the fire fighting efforts as of shortly after midnight last night. The web site is a good one for you to bookmark:

Big Sur Kate is the blogger, and there’s a wealth of information there.

I took the overall map, and overlaid it on the MODIS data above. The alignment isn’t perfect, but you get the idea:

The XX’s are the bulldozed firebreaks. You can see that the ones to the southeast have been recently overrun. It looks like the ones at White Rock and Rancho San Carlos are holding. The black line at the north of the fire means that it has been contained.

You can see that there is little to stop the southern part of the fire from progressing eastward until it hits the fire breaks near Cachagua. There is also very little to keep it from going much further south.

Of course, being a firefighting dummy, I may have misinterpreted the above, and please correct me if I have done so. But it looks to me like Cal Fire has chosen to make their stands in sensible locations, where the supply lines work well because of access to roads, and where the terrain helps, rather than hinders, the firefighting effort.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be scary if the fire more than doubles its east-west width in the next few days.

[Added] I’ve got the results from a oneish pass (hard to tell, because the track is so far to the west this time), and there’s still more activity in the southeast part of the fire in the form of one new hot spot:

Still no radiant power data. Stay tuned.