ATMOSPHERIC PROPERTIES ASSOCIATED WITH LARGE WILDFIRES

Lower atmosphere moistures, temperatures, winds, and lapse rates are e xamined for the days of 339 fires over 400 ha in the United States fro m 1971 through 1984. These quantities are compared with a climatology dataset from the same 14-year period using 2-way unbalanced analysis o f variance. The results show that the fire-day surface-air temperature and moisture differ from the climatology at the 0.001 significance le vel. Near-surface wind shear does not appear to differ significantly b etween fire and climatology days. Results are inconclusive for wind sp eed and surface lapse rate.