Correlation of fire weather observing sites with MOS sites across Wyoming

Numerical guidance to make forecasts across a given area has been well documented. One of the drawbacks of specific numerical guidance (like MOS guidance for specific cities) is that it cannot be used directly for other places in the forecast area. For example, it would obviously be unwise to use a MOS site forecast for a site 3000 feet higher, even though the sites may only be a few miles apart. This is one of the many problems that face fire weather forecasters in trying to develop automated forecasts using MOS guidance. One way to solve this problem is to develop regression equations for the individual fire weather sites based on MOS guidance (Walts and Pochop, 1977). This has been attempted at the WSFO Cheyenne, and the results are presented here. The final objective of all this research is the implementation of an automated fire weather forecast product. Such efforts have already been documented (Mollner and Olsen, 1978), but it is hoped that a regression equation approach would generate more accurate forecasts for the specific sites.