Last Updated on April 17, 2017 6:45 pm
The N. C. Forest Service's Harvell Type 2 Incident Management Team handed fire suppression over to Incident Commander Wicker's Type 4 Team from the Asheville District. The Harvell team will travel home today. The Dobson Knob Fire remains at 1,760 acres and containment has increased to 96 percent. Rain in this week's forecast should help Wicker's Team extinguish the fire and eliminate what little smoke remains.
On Easter Sunday, some residents and business owners in the Triad and Triangle wondered if the smoky haze in their communities was due to the Dobson Knob Fire. The smell and sight of smoke in the air was caused by to the West Mims Fire burning on the Georgia-Florida border. Southwesterly transport winds and atmospheric mixing brought a band of smoke from this 20,151-acre fire to central and west-central portions of North Carolina. “Getting smoked-in from a large fire hundreds of miles away is not an unusual event. When the wind and atmospheric conditions are right, this can and will happen”, noted David Greathouse, fire behavior analyst assigned to the Dobson Knob Fire. The N.C. Division of Air Quality is forecasting “Good” air quality for today in those areas that were smoke-impacted yesterday.
Due to the fire, trail closures remain in place on the Grandfather District of the Pisgah National Forest. The April 11th closure order includes a portion of the Mountains to Sea Trail along the edge of the fire. Forest trail and forest road closures can be found on the National Forests in North Carolina website at www.fs.usda.gov/nfsnc.
