NOAA's National Weather Service today released its Service Assessment for the northern Idaho/western Montana wildfires, which scorched significant portions of the two states from mid July to mid September 2000. Service Assessments are routine reviews of National Weather Service operations during major weather events.

The wildfire season of 2000 was extreme in intensity and duration across the United States. More than 93,000 wildfires scorched over 7.4 million acres of public and private land. The fire season started in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, and flames soon erupted in virtually every state with forest areas, with western states faring the worst. The fire suppression effort required the mobilization of resources from land management agencies, the National Weather Service, U.S. military, and fire crews from as far away as Australia and New Zealand.

The Service Assessment Report provides details on the National Weather Service's support to the Incident Management Teams, land management agencies and local communities. The assessment is available on the Web at:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/firewxreport2.pdf.