In the last weeks of June — after a blistering, parched spring — a series of afternoon thunderstorms moved into Boulder County.
Though their dark clouds offered the hope of desperately needed rain, the storms turned out to be heavy on the electricity and light on the water — the perfect formula for igniting wildfires.
On June 26, for example, lightning strikes started a half-dozen fires in the foothills west of Boulder, including the Flagstaff fire, which ultimately grew to 300 acres. The next day, a thunderstorm delivered light rain over the Flagstaff fire while simultaneously starting as many as 12 small fires in the county.
In the midst of chasing down reports of lightning-started wildfires, the Boulder Office of Emergency Management decided it was time to add a new tool. Officials this summer subscribed to the Lightning Decision Support System, a service created by Oklahoma-based Weather Decision Technologies that allows emergency officials to see, in real time, where lightning is striking in the county.
“It’s been very helpful for a lot of folks; it helps them sort out the I-see-smoke-over-there calls,” said Mike Chard, director of the Boulder Office of Emergency Management. “Before, they got eight calls and they’re just driving up and down the roads looking for it.”
The program overlays a variety of weather data on a Google map interface, including markers for where lightning has occurred — inside a cloud, cloud to cloud, or cloud to ground.
