I worked up in the Mountain and was based out at Pete Field in Colorado Springs for 5 months in 1970. The wind on the highway leading to the road up the mountain on some days was horrendous, often times nearly blowing my car off the road.
One of the comments I saw about the wind and the fires mentioned proximity to Rocky Flats. I'd never made the connection before since the decommissioning of that site was in the news decades ago. Rocky Flats was never fully decontaminated, and plutonium and other radioactive species remain in the soil in that area. It is mostly a wildlife preserve now, but it is west of some residential areas south of Boulder. The thought of high winds regularly blowing around radioactive dust doesn't make for a pretty picture. Some of the burned areas are potentially downwind of Rocky Flats. I wonder whether they have elevated radioactivity in the soil? I hope someone thinks to monitor the air quality as cleanup and reconstruction get underway. We weren't planning to move there but if we did, I think we'd be looking north of Boulder, not south.