March 12, 2024
The Origin of Last Summer's Maui Wildfire
During the past six months, research scientist David Ovens and I have worked intensively on the meteorology of the August 2023 Maui wildfires and have completed a paper that was accepted in an American Meteorological Society journal with a few revisions.
This blog will describe our results, some of which provide different conclusions than those discussed in many media accounts.
The City of Lahaina with the West Maui Mountains to the east before the fire.
To start, it is important to note that there were multiple fires on August 8-9, 2023 (see map below). On Maui, Lahaina was destroyed by one fire and there were large fires in the generally rural area of central Maui. Substantial fires also occurred over the Kohala area of northwest Hawaii.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-origin-of-last-summers-maui-wildfire.html
