Lord, things are starting to get way crazy up here firewise in Colorado, too. Over the weekend two fires broke out; the Mauricio Canyon fire (started by a property owner doing a controlled burn in 40 mph winds with significantly higher gusts... IDIOT! :evil: ) west of the small town of Aguilar, halfway between Trinidad and Walsenburg, torched 4,500 acres :shock: burning five homes and threating dozens of others before a half foot of unexpected snow extinguished the blaze just as it was threatening to jump a road and into the town of Aguilar itself. You know what they say about Colorado weather...
The other fire was started by a blown transformer and grew from less than an acres to 400 acres in less than three hours on the east side of Carter Lake, west of Loveland, threatening many subdivisions and causing the mandatory evacuations of hundreds of residents as a 7 foot wall of flames swept through the tinderbox brush. They have it completely contained now, but it was quite frightening for a few hours there last night.
Fires in winter in Colorado aren't all that unusal in drier winters, but ones burning with the intensity of and consuming amounts of acreage similar to fires more typical in the late summer months occuring in the dead of winter are extremely unusual. These fires have promoted Governor Owens to issue a statewide fireban on all state lands below 8,000 feet. He made the comment that "This is January, but it is as dry as July right now." Denver hasn't seen significant precipitation since the 10th of October; over the past 60 days they've picked up only .55 hundredths of an inch and in the last 30 days the station has only recorded .04 of an inch of moisture. We are getting desperately dry around here, and where we had a wet, warm late summer and early fall, the grass was able to get tall and grow longer than it usually does, so it's especially dangerous at this point. We've had 6 straight months of above normal temperatures in Colorado and it doesn't look to be relenting any time soon. It feels more like late March around here than early January. Some of my mom's early spring blooming flowers bloomed the other day. :shock: I'm praying that there is a major shift in the weather pattern SOON and the Central/Southern plains will need get some massive, wet snow and rainstorms in the coming weeks/months to make up for the complete lack of moisture the last 3-12 months, depending on the location.
This weather is very, very strange. My grandfather is almost 81 years old, a native Coloradoan, and he says he has never seen such a warm fall and early winter around here in his lifetime.
