Climate Change? Nahhh ...

Saturday is supposed to be a bad day too. I've already seen predictions of 80 mph winds before the snow and cold move in. It's windy right now, but if it is the same winds at least up in Estes it is blowing the fire back on itself. So there should be a little break. Estes is also colder today than the other side of the divide so there is that, at least for them. These two fires (Troublesome and Cameron Peak) have burned just about all my favorite places in the mountains.

 

It's not as ominous as earlier because it is getting darker anyway (should have seen what the Fall River entrance looked like this afternoon), but the RMNP webcams are telling. Two of the cameras are offline because the fire went through them. The Longs Peak cam is interesting. It's all smoke.

Webcams - Rocky Mountain National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

 

RMNP has been dealing with a spruce beetle outbreak, too. Could be a lot of dry dead timber there as well.

 

The 2013 floods were a once in 500 year freak. But with the western United States continuing to warm this is probably going to be a pretty occurrence in Colorado just as it seems to be in California.

 

What site is that?

 

I don't know specific sites, but there was a bunch of crazy imagery on Twitter last night. This from the local NWS is a good example:

 

Pretty sure my friend’s cabin is going up as we speak. This guy is Tweeting out videos and he’s only about 1/4 mile away from their place. Everything in sight is on fire.

The fire seemed to stop 2 or so miles from this spot yesterday and there wasn’t a ton of forest or pine trees between where it stopped and their cabin so I had hoped they may be spared.

Really sad. It wasn’t their primary residence and they won’t lose anything irreplaceable. Insurance is paid up. But they just built about 10 years ago and it was a great little place to take in the mountains. Had a lot of beers on that deck.

That have a crazy neighbor who’s about the most mountainy mountain man I’ve ever met. It was his primary residence. I know he evacuated today. I’m a little surprised, but glad, he agreed to leave.

My friend isn’t too down. Had a very “nothing we can do” attitude.

Jeffrey Cook (@JeffreyCook) Tweeted:
This is our view from the Indian Docks Marina on Lake Granby looking north along Highway 34. https://t.co/fvK8Gl0QTv

 

He's had some very sobering tweets this afternoon. Here is another from less than an hour ago:



Sorry about your friend's place. It's a great area. Always been a dream of mine to live in the mountains. This stuff is part of the risk, although it doesn't make it easier not to mention this is out of the ordinary. Really stinks. There is a guy I know locally that lives in an area the Cameron Peak fire swept through and he showed me a photo and the whole mountain side is torched and his house is fine. He had a fire circle, no trees or debris around the house. Not sure how far out it was, but it worked. Probably lucky with this since they've been so wind-whipped. He said most the other properties around were lost.

 

Here's another one from last night showing it actually moving. Crazy this fire was less than 10,000 acres on Wednesday and now is the second largest fire in state history. The three largest are all this year. Top two are still burning.