HRRR Smoke Model Tutorial

The animated movie on the weather.gov/medford/wildfire web page is based on the HRRR. Typically those movies only go out 18 hours. If you want to view imagery that goes out 48 hours, this tuturial will help you get there. The HRRR smoke model has really improved over the past several years and can provide a good idea on where the greatest/least concentration of smoke will be, out to 48 hours. Please understand when viewing this imagery that no model is perfect, and it's usually best to use to view trends where smoke is getting worse or better. Take a look at the AQI in your area, and then you can use the model to see if it looks like your area will improve or worsen through the day/night.

Here's the link to the smoke model page: https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke/

Note that this imagery only shows county boundaries. Below is an image with some approximate city locations as a reference in case you're not familiar with all county boundaries.

When you go to the page, choose NW-Large on the domain for Northwest. Choose the most recent

00Z, 06Z, 12Z, or 18Z model run to get the full, 48 hour outlook. Other model runs go out

18 hours.

If you see blank time periods, you can choose an older model run until all the times fill in. Every 6 hours, there are 48 hours

of forecast. I'm guessing that in this case the 18Z model run hasn't made it all the way out to 48 hours yet.

So I chose 00Z and now all the time periods are filled in.

Lastly, I choose "near-surface" smoke unless you're interested in smoke aloft. Click the loop checkmark.

Once on the loop of imagery, note that the hour is in UTC, so please subtract 7 hours to get the local time.

The following image is for 23:00 UTC, or 16:00 local time, or 4pm.

Active Winter Weather

HRRR Smoke Model Tutorial