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The tragedies keep coming...
Dec. 30th, 2021 08:04 pmThere are a pair of really terrible fires burning a ways north in Colorado. I knew there was a new weather front coming through, but I absolutely did not anticipate the WIND.
Well, the wind - with sustained speeds up to 40-50mph, with gusts that reached highs of 105 and 110mph - plus the extraordinarily dry conditions... and then some downed power lines and blown transformers... perfect recipe for a horrifying grass fire.
One entire town (Superior) and one entire city (Louisville) have been evacuated. I thought that had to be a typo the first time I read it - the entire CITY. Now evacuations and pre-evacuations have been extended into parts of Broomfield, Westminster, and Arvada. (Brushing up within a mile or so from the previous barn that Alex's riding trainer was boarding at, as well as the Butterfly Pavilion, the invertebrate zoo I interned at several years ago.)
In the summer, having an entire mountain town evacuated for a fire isn't unheard of, but that isn't this. Louisville isn't a little town out in the middle of nowhere, and this is getting close to some very major metropolitan areas.
At least 600 homes in Superior alone have been destroyed, and no new counts are likely to be available until tomorrow.
Live coverage has been horrifying.
We aren't extremely close to the fire, but Alex took this picture earlier, where you can see the glow from the fire and the smoke plume against the sky.
Tomorrow we're supposed to have a winter storm. The snow will hopefully help with the fires, if it's not too little too late.
Well, the wind - with sustained speeds up to 40-50mph, with gusts that reached highs of 105 and 110mph - plus the extraordinarily dry conditions... and then some downed power lines and blown transformers... perfect recipe for a horrifying grass fire.
One entire town (Superior) and one entire city (Louisville) have been evacuated. I thought that had to be a typo the first time I read it - the entire CITY. Now evacuations and pre-evacuations have been extended into parts of Broomfield, Westminster, and Arvada. (Brushing up within a mile or so from the previous barn that Alex's riding trainer was boarding at, as well as the Butterfly Pavilion, the invertebrate zoo I interned at several years ago.)
In the summer, having an entire mountain town evacuated for a fire isn't unheard of, but that isn't this. Louisville isn't a little town out in the middle of nowhere, and this is getting close to some very major metropolitan areas.
At least 600 homes in Superior alone have been destroyed, and no new counts are likely to be available until tomorrow.
Live coverage has been horrifying.
We aren't extremely close to the fire, but Alex took this picture earlier, where you can see the glow from the fire and the smoke plume against the sky.
Tomorrow we're supposed to have a winter storm. The snow will hopefully help with the fires, if it's not too little too late.
