Posted on 12/30/2021 8:07:37 PM PST by Enterprise
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/30/weather/colorado-wildfires/index.html
"By morning, the region will experience "weather whiplash," going "from fire to snow," according to the weather service."
Best wishes to you.
High winds blowing down power lines.
The fires are between Boulder and Denver in Boulder County but the main part of Boulder is safe. My house is OK so far but we are staying with our daughter tonight.
I saw a report of a spot fire off of South 68th Street in Boulder. Google Maps shows it to be on the outskirts of Boulder which the news reporter noted.
You don’t stop a fire like that. With winds that high you don’t have time to set a defense. Dry grass and high winds can reach fire speeds over 15 miles and hour. You have to organize and set up a line 20+ miles out in front of it all the time taking into consideration the line is always moving. Grass fires are the worst it burns fast and sends embers a long ways down wind jumping over fire lines easily. The best you can do is try and defend structures and let it burn on by. We had two big fires on the ranch in 2011 and lost 14 square miles of pasture. We were air dropping water with planes and helo’s and the only way it was brought under control was with a back fires and the fact that it hit thick cedars and slowed it down. Had it stayed in the grass we couldn’t have stopped it. This was with 40 to 50 mile per hour winds. The fires in Colorado have 100+ mph winds pushing them in some places. About the best you can do is hope you get everbody out of it’s way.
Oh, that’s a safe bet. I live in the Denver area like several others here who have weighed in tonight (though I’m fortunately in a different part of the metro area). I’ve seen Weather Channel types try to link our sometimes high winds to “climate change” and “extreme weather” before. But these types of winds are common here, usually ahead of cold fronts as in this case, and are magnified by the Venturi effect of the canyons west of Boulder.
The TV news know-nothings love to compare winds here to hurricanes, but they forget that by virtue of our altitude and lower air density the force from a given wind speed is somewhat less here than at sea level. And as for the “extreme weather” panic, I’ve lived here for over 40 years and remember many times we had winds over 100 mph. Once, in the same area as these fires today, a wind gust of 144 mph blew concrete girders off an overpass that was under construction. I think that was in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s.
That’s kinda the way it sounded on those videos
Just try to do what they can way in front of it
I used to be in television news and the meteorologists scratched their heads in my days when the “educated” management types began to peddle earlier versions of the “climate change” mantra.
Amen and Amen!
I see now that Channel 9 here in Denver is titling their coverage “Winter Wildfires.” That’ll probably be their hook in the coming days to blame this on climate change. They’ll be claiming that it’s “unprecedented” to have wildfires during the winter months, just as they tried to make the same claim about the recent tornadoes in Kentucky. Neither is remotely true, however.
Terrorist foreign, domestic, eco, pot farmers??
“Wow” is right.
I had no idea this was happening until I saw this thread.
Well, that didn’t take long. Ever-reliable local 9News lefty Kyle Clark just tried to tie the fires to “climate change.”
Thanks.
I lived in Colorado Springs in the early 1980s and remember the chinook winds that would sweep through in the winter… is it likely that’s what happened in this case?
My daughter lives in Longmont, and she has been watching this stuff since yesterday. She’s in a total panic that she’ll have to evacuate. And she has “a cold” or “the flu” (everything that was labeled a cold or the flu three years ago is now “Covid and very dangerous”) and that makes her more sensitive to the goings on.
Of course, from where I sit, I can’t do a thing to help her.
‘Face
;o]
I’m in West Texas and this time of year is always bad anyway for fire due to all the dry grass but it’s even worse since we’ve been so dry and all the cedars are drying out. Once those cedars get this dry they go up fast. We cut fire lines every year and especially clear out around the ranch house and other structures, some folks don’t understand how important that is. You can’t stop the fire but in most cases you can divert it or take away it’s fuel in small area’s like structures and in our case oil wells and tank battery’s. As I mentioned up thread we lost 14 square miles of pasture but didn’t lose any structures or equipment to the fires in 2011. We did lose several miles of fence. The plus side of this is a good fire rejuvenates over grown pasture and clears out a lot of the undesirable brush and weeds.
Fire is part of natures way of cleaning things up and staying healthy and an important part of ranch management or forest management for that matter. Hell some tree’s can’t reproduce without it. Pre 1900’s we use to have a lot more fires than we do now and they would just burn until they finally went out. The only defense was clear enough area around the house to keep it from getting to it, a practice many seem to have forgotten. Now they build right in the forest and brush area’s and then plant even more combustibles around it.
I use to work in Longmont when I was with the FAA. She’s in no danger up there. She’s a good 10-15 miles to the north. In fact, Longmont was one of the evacuation location during all of this. She’ll be fine as far as the fire situation. As I mentioned, we are 10 miles north east of the fire and this morning I don’t smell any smoke.
Thanks for your reassurance.
I also have a brother in Loveland, but he seems to be in an area that is protected from everything, including the weather!
Not smelling smoke is always good! Before I moved, we were always smelling smoke from the CA fires. It’s good to not smell it, but it may come this way, now.
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