Red Flag at Dawn?

[Jim]

Seriously, someone asked or made a post about wind and Red Flag Warnings, and I saw the NWS posted a "Red Flag Explained" pdf and thought it might be useful to let others know and look at it again myself. Here it is:
( dead link removed, should have attached... )

Back in Florida, we considered a Red Flag Warning to be a day with a Relative Humidity of less than 35%, which is everyday here, and there may have been a wind component, but I don't remember. It's so wet there, that a normal day here is freakishly dry there, and coupled with the resinous plants that evolved with fire and want to burn, they set the bar pretty low, or high depending on perspective. Back there it was simple to understand. Here, well....


OK, we have a Red Flag Warning for tomorrow. It is explained in the table of the document as

Any of the above conditions met within 24 hours

. Which, given that the Coconino NF has us a a fire danger of "Extreme", we should be at a constant state of Red Flag Warning. It says within, not for the duration of, or for a period of x with in 24 hours.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coconino/

In the table, it also shows "Red Flag Watch", and it list the 3 criteria, of which all must be met for 3 hours in a watch period. They are,

Rh < 15%, Sustained 20 foot winds of 20 mph or greater, or wind gusts of 35 mph or greater, and A fire danger rating of high or greater (as determined by USFS)

OK, that makes some sense. The trouble is, they aren't issuing a Red Flag Watch for tomorrow, it's a Warning, and I only recall them issuing Warnings, not Watches. That leads to my problem with this document, because if it were a Watch they issued on given days when all 3 criteria were met, then it would make sense, but they issued a Warning, and given the boxes criteria in the table, we're at a Warning constantly this time of year.

I think, that a Warning is supposed to be the 3 criteria met for 3 hours or more in a watch period, but it doesn't say that. I think a "Watch" which never seems to be issued, is the one we would be constantly at, given the current fire status as issued by the USFS and possibly the Rh alone.
So, a Red Flag Warning, as interpreted by me from the poorly crafted NWS document, is:

Rh < 15% and Sustained 20 foot winds of 20 mph or greater, or wind gusts of 35 mph or greater and and A fire danger rating of high or greater (as determined by USFS), all for 3 hours or more.