I rode my bike up to the Fort Collins fire this morning. It turns out that almost all off the burn was grass, with only a few small patches of trees. There is still quite a bit of snow in the burn area, as you can see in the picture below (white patches.)
We have had a lot of snow recently, including two heavy, wet snows during the past week. But around noon on Friday, a very strong Chinook wind picked up and spread a government started (un)controlled burn over a few hundred acres.
It is probably a good idea for government employees to check the weather forecast before they start playing with fire. No doubt this will be blamed on global warming.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF3iK3rJUfU]
Steve, don’t be too harsh on the guys who started the fire. All we ever hear about are “the one’s that got away”. Very seldom do we hear about the millions of acres of successful prescribed burns that are accomplished each year. There’s a saying in the prescribed fire community that goes something like this: “If you’ve never had a fire get away from you, you haven’t been burning long enough.”
Just as in every endeavor that humans undertake, fecal matter happens. At least the guys were burning in this particular area when there was residual snow around to keep the fire, should it escape, from turning into a full-blown inferno that consumed the entire area. Now, not being a western U.S. burner, I can say that I probably wouldn’t be burning with a Chinook wind in the forecast, but maybe this one was an unexpected one that took them by surprise?
There was a cold front headed in, and Chinooks are very common ahead of cold fronts.
The US Forest Service burned up much of Los Alamos in 2000, by being complete idiots with a controlled burn. (BTW : I worked for two summers as a wilderness ranger for the USFS.)
Dito here in the interior of Alaska.
Some of the planned burns are done with itchy fingers…
I was a witness to the Los Alamos stupidity and was shocked to learn they had been setting fires under such extreme fire hazard conditions.
I just have to wonder about this latest fire, seems convenient somehow.
Forest Fires are Gaia’s way of telling us that 395 ppm of CO2 is too low.
200 ppm and plants begin to suffer, 150 ppm and they die.
A multiple of 2.6 is not much of a safety factor for life on Earth.
A 10 banger would be better at 1500 ppm. The plants would love it.
Yeah, the Los Alamos fire was a complete goat-rope. It led to the already bloated Fed burn regs and rules becoming even more bloated, to the point where you couldn’t get most sane people to burn on Fed lands if you handed them the keys to Ft. Knox and a getaway 18-wheeler.
McKitten is on it…
The NWS and most of the other weather groups can not get conditions right even as they are happening! Temps here were predicted to be 60 yesterday even as they exceeded 74.
Steve, what is your source for this fire being the result of a government burn?
It started next to the visitor center of a State Park. Rumor is that it was a controlled burn, and there has been no denial of that claim.