Predicting the Weather to Fight Fires Down Under

It wasn't as simple as packing a bag and getting on the plane like years before. In fact, getting to Australia as a National Weather Service Incident Meteorologist-IMET for short-required a good deal of preparation, not least of which was applying for an official passport to work as a US government employee overseas. But after answering the call from the Australian Government, filing the paperwork, getting said passport, packing a bag and saying goodbye, NWS IMET Patrick Gilchrist was on his way from the middle of nowhere to help fight the worst fires-out of anywhere in the world-of 2019.

In November of 2019, numerous "megafires," each burning more than 100,000 acres had erupted in the Province of New South Wales, Australia-the home to Sydney, Eucalyptus Forests and the lovable koala bear. As a result, the Australia Government requested meteorological assistance from multiple allies. Among them was the United States, who sent nine IMETs to the country to help in weather prediction to better support fire analysis and help firefighters on the ground. As of Nov. 8, 2019, more than 80 fires were burning across the region and many of those were uncontrolled.

That was the situation when Gilchrist disembarked for his flight in November on the southeast coast of Australia and went to work forecasting weather for fire behavior analysts and incident commands across Australia.

Gilchrist said his first two weeks were spent in Sydney at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology doing "Spotties" or SPOT Weather Forecasts. Following those weeks, he was sent to Brisbane, but continued supporting the New South Wales region remotely.

"It was pretty amazing, because the Bureau of Meteorology had been getting pretty burned out from the fire-weather aspect," explained Gilchrist. "They'd been getting pounded for weeks prior to us coming in, and it was really nice that we were able to help take some of that load off of them and let them focus on the other duties that they have."

You may think that traveling to the other side of the globe and switching hemispheres would be a daunting challenge for a meteorologist from the states, but Gilchrist said that was not the case. Besides the change in direction of weather rotation and the slight metric conversions (which meteorology uses for a number of measurements in the States anyway) the science was universal and the equipment, techniques and data were, for the most part, the same or very similar.

Aside from those details, Gilchrist said, "Ultimately the meteorology is the same. So, the way we're looking at things... are all the same."

One key difference between the two schools of meteorology was the modeling of weather events. Australia uses models that were built and fine-tuned for the continent, and Gilchrist said there was a curve to learning those models and applying them to forecasting. The same was true for learning the Australian specific interfaces for working forecasts and dissemination.

New South Wales is far from being a barren Outback-like wilderness. It is true that much of the continent is sparsely populated, but a large portion of the population lives on the southeast coast near Sydney. The region is also full of eucalyptus forest, which is the only home to the koala bear. A report from the New South Wales government said the fires killed 5,000 of the state's population-roughly one-third off the total population. The fires also decimated 24 percent of the creature's habitat.

In supporting the fires, Gilchrist said the weather was disparate. Weather events were as diverse as hot, dry and windy-the worst days for firefighting-and then there were thunderstorms and heavy rains-days that produced their own challenges as lightning strikes sparked off even more fires.

"The most stressful days were the big burn days," explained Gilchrist. "The days we would come in and we knew it was going to be hot, dry, unstable and we'd know the winds were coming... and we'd watch the fires just blow up and on such a large scale... this was fire for hundreds of miles and you knew that firefighters were having a hard day... to just sit back and be an observer to that just very stressful. And you can hear it in people's voices. When you talk to people on the phone, you can just hear it in their voice... because the fire was winning that day."

In all, Gilchrist spent the better part of November and December of 2019 down under, returning in time for 2020 in Montana. In recognition for his contribution to the firefighting efforts in New South Wales, Gilchrist and his fellow eight IMETs that served in Australia, were awarded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator's Award-the highest award NOAA presents to its employees.

"The NOAA Administrator's Awards recognize employees who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, skill, and ingenuity in their significant, unique, and original contributions that bring unusual credit to NOAA, DOC, and the Federal Government," said NOAA in a release describing the awards.

The Premier of New South Wales also recognized the nine IMETS for their contributions and playing a significant role in the emergency response to combat the fires. Each IMET received a NSW Premier's Bushfire Emergency Citation, which is an insignia of the Citations, a rectangular silver framed navy-blue bar featuring a red stripe to signify the bushfire event, and the NSW State Flower (Waratah); a letter from the Premier of NSW and a Certificate co-signed by the Premier and Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons; as well as an embroidered Commemorative Cap

A Glasgow native, Gilchrist graduated from Glasgow High School and pursued meteorology in college. After grad school, he entered the National Weather Service and became an incident meteorologist over 15 years ago. During that time, he has responded to multiple fires a year with the exception of three years with low fire impacts. In total, Gilchrist has served on 25 total fires during his decade-and-a-half tenure as Glasgow's IMET.

"Right from the get go, I knew this is what I wanted to do," he said, discussing becoming an IMET. "I took my first full-time job in the weather service in Missoula, and I made sure that my boss knew that I wanted to be an IMET, that I was serious ad I wanted to do this... and, luckily, I was able to do this."

IMETs are a specialized, exclusive group. In the entire weather service, there are only about 80 IMETs out of hundreds of meteorologists. They attend advanced training, learn about fire-weather prediction and support disasters as diverse as wildfires, oil spills and widespread flooding.

The job requires a good deal of time as well. Gilchrist credited the Glasgow weather service with supporting him in his alternate role as an IMET and compensating for the time he is away from his primary job as Warning Coordination Meteorologist in Northeast Montana. In 2020, Gilchrist travelled to two of the America's largest wildfires-the Cameron Peak Fire in Colorado, the state's largest ever, and the Lion's Head Fire in Oregon, which destroyed the town of Detroit, Ore. He spent multiple weeks at each supporting incident commands in the field as they battled historically large fires for each state.

Support from home has also been a huge factor in staying on as an IMET. "I have an immense amount of support from my family," he said. "Christine [Gilchrist, his wife] is a real trooper. She makes sure that all the kids are taken care of while I'm gone which is certainly not easy. My parents help her out as well. But without that support, I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I have that support behind me and I'm able to do this work."