Surface smoke not working today. This is what I was using to monitor the Forest fires to know where to go and not to go in California to stay out of the smoke .
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This is a NOAA product and they are having major server issues. See the forum post on it.
It’s looking like it’s coming back online, hopefully we can get the data in the next hours.
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BTW, you can use the PM2.5 and PM10 data in the new air quality data.
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HRRR smoke is back.
Do you use Smoke CS - the HYSPLIT model, or just HRRR?
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@GWaters Hello and Welcome to the Forum and Thank You for Using Flowx
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What is the difference between HYSPLIT smoke and HRRR smoke? I am interested in the smoke that I am going to be breathing. Which model should I be looking at?
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There are different simulations with different resolutions, time periods and update cycles. I don’t know the finer differences. I think HRRR is better?? I might remove HYSPLIT in the future - it breaks often.
See Datasources
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Thank You!
Another question: What model should I use to monitor spot fire possibilities in my direction from the fire?
Integrated column smoke:
HRRR shows nothing its a blank
HYSPLIT shows colors
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spot fires are wind blown so 1. watch the wind 2. look outside Sorry @duane no app can tell you chance of spot fires tell its too late. rate of spread also wind dependant along with topography nothing beats your eyes fires if large enough produce their own weather not measured by any app or weather provider. however you can plan ahead of time with the info Flowx provides. (I’m sure this could be worded differently but I have a problem with putting thoughts to words sorry)
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Thank you. Keeping an eye on the North Complex fire.
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@GWaters don’t get me wrong Flowx gives a ton of Extremely Valuable info that you can use to keep an eye on things just fires are tricky and change quickly.
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Yes you are right. I am looking at HYSPLIT column smoke to get an idea of what the upper level air is doing because pretty large embers can get carried up and then dropped out miles away.
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Thanks @BrianLY-38.
The reality is that I’m not a meteorologist or fire spread expert. I can find data, process it and deliver it via Flowx. The nitty-gritty details is beyond my skills and time to grasp.
For example, I found this data that predicts rain from satellite cloud images - which looks very cool. I don’t know the details of how it works but I can process the data and deliver it via Flowx.
Additionally, we don’t get all this valuable data where I live so it’s difficult for me to relate predictions to real life.
Essentially, I’m the messenger, it’s up to you to interpret the message to your value. But you know I will do my best to deliver the message 
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There are some bug in the processing of the smoke data. Some of it is experimental so it might’ve changed. I’ll look into it.
Also, I would like to make a submenu for smoke instead of filling your menu with many icons.
Cheers, Duane.
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This is the kind of discussion I like to see here. I learn something from people using Flowx.
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Thank you. I am a retired Civil Engineer and have fought 23 wildland fires in California while I was in college. I took alot of fire science classes because I wanted to know what the fire was doing. Almost got burned up 3 days in a row on one fire because back in those days we did not have data and very limited communication. There was no way to know what the fire was doing beyond ourlimitedbe.
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So I really appreciate your work in putting the data together!
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You are right, one of the biggest factors for fires is the wind.
There are different kinds of wind that that must be taken into account: the prevailing wind, diurnal winds, which are surface winds and play the biggest part in small fires. When the fires become large they create their own winds. The upper atmospheric begin to come into play which can be quite different from the surface winds. All of these winds must be considered when looking at fire behavior.
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