Scientists hope wildfire smoke will help them predict future fires
TRUCKEE (CBS13) - The dark skies can be daunting but trying to breathe -- it's just about unbearable with that thick smoke.
"It's so thick you can see the particulate matter coming down and yeah, for obvious reasons it has not been fun to be in it," said Mark, who lives near the smoke.
"Yeah, just the air quality was really bad. More power to our firefighters, right?" said Lisa Barker, who also lives near the smoke.
While firefighters brave the firelines, scientists aren't far behind -- studying the smoke from it.
"I'm no stranger to smoke, I've seen a lot of smoke on a lot of wildfires but it was just about as bad as I've ever seen," said Neil Lareau, an atmospheric scientist and professor at the University of Nevada.
Lareau lives in Truckee and he's one of several researchers studying wildfire smoke by flying right alongside massive walls of smoke just to see how intense the fire is and then using laser devices to see what's driving the flames forward.
"They act like radars but they actually see the very small smoke particles and they're very good at measuring the air flow so how quickly the air is moving in one direction or another," said Lareau.
Ginter: So what will this study as far as helping us be able to read these fires so-to-speak?
Lareau: I think the word you used "unpredictable" is what we're trying to address. Trying to understand what a fire is going to do and why it's going to do it.
The Mosquito Fire is churning not only monster clouds but information to help predict the next one.
"Oh absolutely, I feel the more information you can gain the better and the better able to prepare I mean isn't that what it's all about?" said Barker.
Being prepared is the key. That's why scientists hope this study will give them insight into how to predict what a wildfire will be doing in an hour, a day, or two days from now.