SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) – In the height of an unprecedented early start to wildfire season, San Jose State University is expanding its wildfire academic team.

The college already has a fire weather lab and now a new center focusing on wildfire sciences.

San Jose State has hired five faculty members with backgrounds in wildfire science and management. An investment for the university’s wildfire research.

“Californians need to remember we don’t have hurricanes, we don’t have tornadoes rarely but fire weather is our critical weather it’s our severe weather that we have to be prepared for,” Craig B. Clements, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science, said. 

Craig Clements is a professor of meteorology and climate science at SJSU. He also runs the department’s fire weather research lab bringing students to the frontlines of the state’s devastating wildfires – his group once dubbed the new tornado chasers.

“We use that same kind of methodology and deployment strategy where we see an event, we want to go to it. The difference is we really want to get these assets behind the fire lines or behind the closures,” Clements said. 

Working closely with Cal Fire, Clements and his team chased the Carr and Camp fires in 2018.

For the first time last year, Clements’ team deployed a new customized truck equipped with doppler radar scanning wildfire plume at the Kincade fire in Sonoma County.

The latest, the CZU August Lightning Complex fire in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Clements says the pandemic has made field experiments challenging because it’s hard to social distance.

SJSU has three wildfire classes this fall semester through distance learning.

On top of fire chasing, Clements has a new title within his department: Director of the New Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center.

Four new tenure track faculty members will join him specializing in wildfire management, fire ecology, mechanical engineering and fire behavior and weather.

A timely addition ahead of the peak of fire season.

“Be prepared for the fall because fuels are critically dry so if we have another ignition under some wind regime it can be really dangerous still,” Clements said. 

In the meantime, members of the fire weather lab are monitoring extreme heat expected this Labor Day weekend, threatening fire danger.

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