Smoke Management Guidelines

• Smoke drift away from potential smoke sensitive areas
  • No tonnage limits
• Smoke drift toward potential smoke sensitive areas
  • Category 1 - VERY limited
  • Category 2 - Daytime burning only. Burning to start after inversion burnoff temperature is reached and will cease by sunset. Burning will cease 2 hours before sunset if nighttime dispersion is forecasted to be poor or very poor.
  • Category 3 - Daytime burning only. Burning to start after inversion burnoff temperature is reached and will cease by sunset. Burning will cease 2 hours before sunset if nighttime dispersion is forecasted to be poor or very poor.
  • Category 4 - Daytime burning and nighttime burning except during nighttime when poor or very poor smoke dispersion is forecasted.
  • Category 5 - Daytime burning and nighttime burning except during nighttime when poor to very poor smoke dispersion is forecasted.

Organic Material - Residual Burning
When organic material is ignited during prescribed burning activities, and the material continues to burn, a daily evaluation will be made to estimate the acres continuing to burn within a given 16,000-acre block and approximate daily tonnage that will be consumed. The standard daily burning rate of undisturbed organic material is 16 tons/acre/day. This assumes that one solid acre burns at the same rate of approximately one inch per day. Adjustments to the daily burning rate of organic material and to the actual number of acres on fire are necessary to actually assess the impact or residual burning within each 16,000-acre block. The tonnage derived from residual burning will be subtracted from the available total tonnage each day to determine the adjusted tonnage that can burned within the 16,000 acre block.