Taken from Loveland, Colorado which is the town it threatens to encroach on if the winds shift. The initial report was 100 acres and it grew by 150 or so every hour. I've been doing irrigation work outside for two hours and already have a terrible headache. That smoke plume is heading toward Denver with the entire front range of the Rockies obscured.
Edit: super cool. It has again more or less doubled in size over the past few hours and is now at 3575 acres. The smoke plume in this photo is quaint compared to how it now is. A second fire has started just south of it, also close to a town, so the suppression efforts will be split.
Reading inciweb reports is always so frustrating. Why the fuck are we not using the military to scramble resources to fight fires that threaten critical infrastructure before they have several days to grow?!
i can understand some hesitance to enlist dumbass boots in any task that requires tact and precision
I can accept that. There's still no excuse for not having a ecology defense wing for nature lovers in the military who can be trusted to safely build fire lines, manage controlled burns, etc.
Especially stupid given that there are at least two major airbases within 100mi.
There's a fire in Cali right now that's burned about 10 square miles.
There's certainly an acreage gulf between these and the megafires. This one concerns me because it's right next to a large town and critical water infrastructure. The environmental conditions are really bad for containment and it has a solid chance of jumping the existing burn scar to become a much larger fire. That fire in California luckily spread mostly through uninhibited wilderness.
Oh hell yeah. A second fire erupted this afternoon just south of the Alexander Mountain Fire. Instead of threatening Loveland and the smaller Masonville along with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado%E2%80%93Big_Thompson_Project, it's right outside the town of Lyons. The winds are carrying it toward the larger fire which is creating its own weather. My first announcement a few hours ago was 30 acres, then 300 an hour ago, and now 450. We've only mustered around 200 firefighters so far for the first fire, and I've consistently seen three attack aircraft flying over it. Now they're split between the two. This could be a really interesting fire to watch.
That’s roughly 735 hectares for all you non-honkey tonk Yankee Doodle doo freedom unit users
