When he isn't raising a little dust of his own barreling down some Prairie back road trying to outstrip a Sooner wind, storm chaser Josh Wurman can sometimes be found these days aiming his weather instruments at a wildfire.

Wurman, an affiliate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has found that the pioneering mobile radar units he developed called Doppler on Wheels, which were designed to study the internal behavior of tornados and hurricanes, also can be used to track the radical dance of air in and around a wildfire.

Wurman's mobile radar units could be found in Montana last summer probing the Robert Fire near Glacier National Park, gathering data that researchers believe may shed light on fire dynamics and help improve forecasting of wildfires and the affect they have on local weather.

Like conventional radar, Doppler transmits a pulse of energy that bounces off rain, pin-pointing the exact location of precipitation. Doppler is much more powerful than conventional radar, however, and also can measure wind direction within a storm or, now, inside an angry, billowing wildfire.

When chasing storms, the mobile radar rigs — low, heavy, flat-bed trucks carrying service modules and Doppler radar antennas — are ready to quarrel. Outfitted with roll bars, hail cages and stabilizing arms that extend to brace the vehicle against high winds, the trucks scurry around Tornado Alley, searching for the elusive super-cell that might spawn a tornado.

Wildfires are easier to find.

“With radar, you can penetrate through the plume and see how vigorously the air is moving up and down, and you can characterize the wind flows around the fire,” Wurman said.

Currently, U.S. firefighters are usually guided by National Weather Service spot forecasts. While these tools provide generalized area conditions and current wind speed and direction, they can't predict sudden shifts in wind, sometimes caused by the fire itself, which can unexpectedly drive flames in new directions.

Even when larger-scale winds are light, the intense heat generated by a fire can produce tornado-like fire whirls and other phenomena that can play havoc with firefighting plans and fire warnings. In 1994, 14 firefighters died in a wildfire on Storm King Mountain in western Colorado when strong west winds triggered fire runs that spread as quickly as 6 to 9 feet per second.

If the Montana sampling proves useful, mobile radar deployments could become a routine part of wildland fire monitoring. Eventually, radar data on erratic, dangerous winds might be transmitted to laboratories in real time and integrated into numerical models and decision support systems.

“Radar data could help us make short-term forecasts of where a fire is going to be hottest, what it's going to be like in two or three hours, and whether the wind is likely to shift,” Wurman said.

“If you know that type of information, you can fight a fire more efficiently and safely,” he said.

The fire/weather interaction can extend beyond the fire area itself. The largest wildland blazes may influence weather for miles away as they shape larger-scale air flow and emit smoke and airborne particles. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Forecast Systems Laboratory are exploring techniques to bring radar data into high-resolution weather forecast models so that the downstream weather effects might be captured more accurately.

Doppler on Wheels is based at the Center for Severe Weather Research, a nonprofit research organization in Boulder, Colo.

The radar deployment in Montana was sponsored by the Wildland Fire Research and Development Collaboratory, an NCAR-based consortium of U.S. national laboratories, universities, and federal and state agencies dedicated to learning more about wildfires. The National Science Foundation, NCAR's principal sponsor, provides funding for the collaboratory and radars.