Opinion
A4
Thursday, August 18, 2022
OUR VIEW
Develop
bett er plan
for managing
public forests
he folks at the Oregon Department of Forestry have
retracted their new multi-million-dollar map iden-
tifying 80,000 privately owned parcels of land that
are at high risk of burning up during a wildfi re. The map
was dropped in the laps of landowners with little or no
consultation about what it may mean in the way of higher
insurance rates and other impacts.
The map apparently skipped over the fact that the primary
threat to privately owned forests and other land in Oregon is
poorly managed publicly owned forests. Some 64% of for-
estland in Oregon is owned by the state and federal govern-
ments. It’s on them to make sure those areas are managed in a
way that minimizes the threat of wildfi re.
Many wildfi res start on public forests and grasslands,
which have been allowed to build up fuel over the decades.
When lightning strikes, or a campfi re gets out of control,
these tinder boxes take off . If wind is present — and it often
is — the fi res are driven onto private forests and other proper-
ties, even farmland.
Poorly designed and maintained power lines are particu-
larly susceptible to wind. When those lines slap together, even
more fi res can be started.
Even the best-managed private property can be burned if
the state and federal government and the power companies
aren’t doing an adequate job of maintaining their land and
facilities.
Ask the folks who were burned out of house and home in
the Santiam Canyon or the many other areas that have been
torched by wildfi res in recent years.
Most private land is well-managed. It has to be, because the
owners depend on it for their livelihoods and lifestyles. They
care.
It’s the publicly owned land that has been the problem for
decades. It was unmanaged, or poorly managed, on the theory
that it was in some way sacrosanct and that logging was bad
and doing nothing was good.
Only now — after some of the worst wildfi re disasters in
state history — are managers getting the message that they
have to step up and do a better job.
Though “treating” and prescriptive burning of forests is a
start, an overall game plan that would plot defensive areas and
strategies that help fi refi ghters stop or control wildfi res is also
desperately needed.
The state and federal governments need to come up with
another map and identify the public forest land most in need
of thinning, treatment, prescriptive burning, fi re breaks or
logging and get to work.
And yes, they need to protect those precious birds and
other critters listed under the Endangered Species Act. But
they also have to recognize that leaving vast swaths of habitat
unmanaged and vulnerable to massive wildfi res leaves those
species in danger of incineration.
Ironically, some environmental groups are also to blame
for blocking or delaying treatment and logging projects by
running to court. They believe they are doing the protected
species and the forests a favor by backseat driving forest and
wildlife management.
A word about climate change. The Capital Press has been
reporting on climate change for nearly two decades. This is
not something that just happened when politicians discov-
ered it among their talking points. It is happening and scien-
tists continue to study it to gain a better understanding of it.
It should also be noted that the climate has always changed,
only the pace of change is diff erent.
Politicians at the state and federal level seem to get hung
up on long-term solutions that will slow climate change over
decades or longer. In the meantime, they have to deal with the
here and now of climate change by better managing public
forests and grasslands to make sure they do not burn — and
take private property, forests and grasslands with them.
T
How does the National Weather
Service defi ne a heat wave?
COLE
EVANS
EYE TO THE SKY
he heat wave from July 25
through Aug. 1 provided
yet another round of record-
breaking temperatures for Eastern
Oregon, with La Grande seeing
multiple days of new daily record
high temperatures set.
In fact, La Grande matched
recorded new daily records on July
30 and Aug. 1, recording a high of
105 degrees each day to set new
high water marks. While this heat
wave wasn’t quite as severe as the
historical one during June of last
year, such events are a sobering
reminder of what a future climate
may hold for Eastern Oregon. Both
NOAA and the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change antici-
pate that heat waves will become
more frequent and severe with a
warming climate.
But what exactly is a heat wave?
The criteria for determining a
heat wave changes depending on
the context, but is generally con-
sidered to be a period of exces-
sive heat that lasts multiple days.
Here at the National Weather Ser-
vice, we’re interested in advising
the public about the heat when
we anticipate adverse impacts to
health due to abnormally high
temperatures.
At what point that exactly is
will depend heavily on the geo-
graphic region of interest. In the
T
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or an Excessive Heat Warning
based on the HeatRisk. In simple
terms, a warning is more severe
than an advisory both when it
comes to the magnitude and dura-
tion of the extreme heat, with tem-
perature records more often at risk
under a Warning. But HeatRisk is
just one of many tools NWS fore-
casters utilize when advising the
public about the potential of a heat
wave.
Out here, east of the Cascade
mountains, where the public is a
bit better equipped to handle long
spells of heat than our neighbors
on the west side, the character of
the heat and the time of year is also
assessed. This is done in part to be
sure heat events are assessed on a
case-by-case basis and to ensure
more severe events are addressed
thoroughly.
For metro areas such as Port-
land and Seattle, however, where
many homes lack air condi-
tioning, even marginal events
may require an elevated notice in
order to better advise the public,
at-risk populations, and emergency
responders on the potential for a
heat wave.
Regardless, HeatRisk off ers
the National Weather Service
and its core partners a simplifi ed
tool to communicate the potential
impacts a heat wave may pose on
the public.
█
Cole Evans is a meteorologist at the National
Weather Service in Pendleton. Evans joined
the weather service in 2020 and serves
as a focal point in aviation weather and
performance assessment in the office.
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eastern United States, humidity
plays a large role in the heat, and
the Heat Index is often utilized
when defi ning a heat wave. The
Heat Index factors in humidi-
ty’s eff ect on temperatures and
human health, but out here in
the West, where the air is much
drier, the Heat Index is often sim-
ilar to or even less than the actual
temperature.
As a result, the NWS offi ces
of the western United States use
a prototype product called Heat-
Risk (www.wrh.noaa.gov/wrh/
heatrisk/?wfo=pdt), which is
designed to put a period of hot
temperatures into a climatolog-
ical context. The main advan-
tage of HeatRisk is that it takes a
multitude of factors into consid-
eration, outside of just how hot
temperatures may reach during
the peak of expected heat.
Factors such as the overnight
low temperatures, time of year,
duration of the heat and thresholds
of health-related impacts from the
heat based on CDC data are all uti-
lized in tandem with the forecasted
high temperature. All of these
serve as inputs into the HeatRisk
calculation, which determines a
category score from 0 to 4, similar
to the UV Index or the Air Quality
Index. A 0 category denotes no
heat impacts expected and 4 sug-
gests the entire population is likely
at risk for heat-related impacts,
not just the more heat-sensitive
members of the public such as the
elderly.
The National Weather Service
may issue either a Heat Advisory
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