The best time to fight a forest fire is when it is small. Unfortunately, prior to 1939, it could take a long time for crews to hike to a remote fire, and many small fires grew into large ones before they could be attacked by firefighters.

In 1934, a Forest Service Employee, T.V. Pearson, proposed that firefighters be flown to small fires and parachuted in to fight them before they could grow into major blazes. Many people thought the idea was crazy.

But in 1939, the Forest Service began an experiment with smokejumpers. Smoke jumpers are specially trained firefighters who parachute into remote areas to fight wildfires on difficult terrain.

It immediately became apparent that the program was going to be effective. The first mission for the smoke jumpers was a fire in the Nez Perce Forest in Idaho on July 12, 1940. The program quickly expanded.

On August 5, 1949, a group of fifteen smokejumpers from Missoula, Montana were dispatched to what appeared to be a routine fire in the Helena National Forest in Montana. It was a hot and dry day in when the smokejumpers landed in a canyon called Mann Gulch at about 4 p.m.

By 5:30, the firefighters were employing classic forest firefighting technique, digging a trench around the blaze as a firebreak. The fire had begun to burn to the top of the ridge, and the crew, led by Foreman Wagner Dodge thought that the fire had spent itself.

Suddenly, at 5:35 p.m., the fire began migrating down the hill and got between the men and the Missouri River. To be continued in tomorrow’s Weather Talk.

Gads, still no video unless you get the iTunes version. I've gotten the software installed but now comes the tough part of trying to find my way through getting it all set up and running properly. I'll keep plugging away at it.

Big news this afternoon is the decrease in strength of Tropical Storm Chris. Chris is still barely a tropical storm and is expected to drop into the depression category this evening. The satellite imagery tells the story with the low level circulation located a long way from any deep convection. The track of Chris remains the same with a westerly course taking it along the northern coast of Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico early Monday. If the shear does weaken then Chris could redevelop and gain back some intensity, so we're prepared to watch it for the next several days.

For us in Central Alabama, there is little to talk about. It is hot, it will stay hot, and it looks like this pattern is with us for the next several days - perhaps a week or longer. Morning lows will bottom out in the lower and middle 70s with afternoon highs in the mid 90s. I just don't see anything that will give us much help with the dryness or the heat. Isolated showers will have to be mentioned, but most of us will stay dry.

I'm going to get back to the computer and try to figure out the settings and see about producing the video portion of this post. Wish me luck.

Stay cool and do take the heat seriously especially if you have to be outside working for long periods of time.

-Brian-

In that vast ocean of hot, humid air that covers Alabama, scattered thunderstorms developed down over the south one-fourth of the state. Translation: From about Clarke, Monroe and Barbour County southward to the coast.

They were all moving generally westward.

Nothing going on over the north 3/4 of the state.

NWS In Mobile issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Baldwin County until 3:45 pm for the possibility of penny-size hail and wind gusts over 60 mph.

Question of the day: If the United States Mint stops making the penny coin, what will we call that size hail?

The Alabama landscape continues to bake. A sampling of 3 o'clock temperatures:

93 in Birmingham (one of the cooler places)
95 in Montgomery
96 in Anniston and Tuscaloosa
97 in Decatur, Huntsville, Albertville, Fort Payne
99 in Gadsden and Meridianville
80 in Mobile, cooled by a thunderstorm
83 in Troy also cooled by a thunderstorm

For the third day in a row, we will surely see some high temperatures of 100.

Video still on hold this morning as the software arrived very late yesteday afternoon and I did not have enough time to get it loaded. Will try my best to get it installed and working for the afternoon version which may be just a bit late due to early afternoon activities.

Well, yesterday at this time we were looking for the first hurricane of the season but Chris has encountered some stronger than expected shear and he is in trouble. Visible satellite imagery showed the low level circulation of Chris to be completely detached from the deep convection located well south and southeast of that low level circulation. Chris is being maintained as a minimal tropical storm which is somewhat generous. Besides the decrease in strength, Chris took a slight turn to a more westerly course late yesterday. The result is that the future track of Chris has been shifted south of the previous tracks. Big question is whether Chris will even be able to survive. The shear is expected to slack off a bit in the area ahead of Chris, so stay tuned for the latest developments.

Elsewhere in the tropics there is little of concern. An area of disturbed weather stretched from south of the Cayman Islands across Cuba to the southern Bahamas, but there was no sign of any development in that area.

For Alabama and much of the Southeast US, our weather pattern is showing very little signs of change. The ridge aloft keeps a strong hold on the upper level pattern with surface high pressure nosing across the Southeast from the Atlantic. The upper level ridge changes little into the weekend and then strengthens on Monday. So for the next week or so there does not appear to be any reason to change the forecast of hot temperatures and isolated afternoon thunderstorms. Moring lows will be in the middle 70s while the afternoon highs will continue to reach the mid and upper 90s.

Remembering back to our last big heat wave, the summer of 1980, it's important to take the heat seriously. Be sure to drink lots of water and take frequent breaks if you are engaged in strenuous activities outside. Also be sure to check on elderly friends or relatives to make sure they are okay.

The video is available via iTunes.

Stay cool. More this afternoon.

-Brian-

And it is a story of a tropical storm that is being torn by wind shear and has greatly weakened. He was centered, early this morning, about 100 miles north of the north coast of Puerto Rico moving west at 13 with highest sustained winds all the way down to 45 mph.

I was just looking at an IR satellite loop and it is an amazing clearcut case of the circulation center becoming detached from the thunderstorm activity, which has actually broken away from the center and is moving southward and now located SE of the circulation center.

The official track forecast has changed since yesterday and now keeps Chris on a more westward track. He is expected to move along the edge of the north coast of Cuba Sunday and into the SE Gulf of Mexico early Monday. By early Tuesday, the center is expected to be over the South Central Gulf of Mexico.

The tropical models also insist on this more southerly track. In fact, two of the models carry the center across the Dominican Republic and Haiti and into the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. The northernmost model still keeps it south of the Florida peninsula.

It appears that the protective ridge to the north will hold and this should keep Alabama safe. The long-range projection points to a possible landfall near the South Texas-Mexico border around Brownsville, Texas at the mouth of the Rio Grande late Wednesday night or early Thursday.

Just looking at the 3:00 AM observations from the airports in our part of the state, and some of the internet weather stations tells an interesting story about central Alabama's landscape and how it influences the weather!

3 AM Observations

-Birmingham Airport: 81 F
-SkyCam Downtown: 80 F
-Alabaster/Shelby Co.: 78 F
-Inverness SkyCam: 79 F
-Pell City: 77 F
-Jasper SkyCam: 78 F
-Oakmulgee (Perry Co.) 75 F
-Cullman Airport: 75 F
-Gadsden Airport: 73 F

The hotter temperatures, such as Birmingham Airport, Downtown Birmingham, and Inverness are all inside what we call the "urban heat island," while Oakmulgee, the Cullman Aiport (well outside the city), and the Gadsden airport (also well away from the downtown area) are more rural and don't have the same heat-retention capability.

Why the heat island? Concrete, asphalt, rooftops, and other man-made materials are efficient at changing light energy into heat energy in the afternoons. This also leads to a slower cooling process overnight than you see in the more rural areas where there is more vegetation!

Get ready for another hot one today! Forecast highs are in the middle to upper 90s again, but the heat index should top out over 100 F easily with only a small chance of t-storms!

Stay cool!