Cameron Peak Fire 8.13.20

[AlpineAccess]

Spoke with neighbors this morning, the county is asking home owners to pre-evacuate homes in the Red Feather area - 15 miles away - due to south south east winds and dry thunderstorms. We've had a lot of wind here in town, I'm sure its really blowing up there.

Fire is at 16k acres today, zero containment. Really hope crews are staying safe, the fire is in really rugged terrain with a TON of fuel. We hike that area a lot, the trees are really dense and stressed. Every third tree is beetle kill and anything not dead is super dry this year.

 

[Inukshuk]

 

[DaveInDenver]

 

[AlpineAccess]

That's a lot of movement. Hope the rain helped today.

 

[ccslider]

It's raining ashes here in Broomfield. Been smokey all-day.

 

[shellb]

Agreed. One of the worse days in memory for smoke/ash.

 

[AlpineAccess]

Cameron peak fire exploded yesterday and today. Horrible.

Last report was it added over 10k acres and shot up into RMNP area as well as southwest.

 

[DaveInDenver]

The perimeter as of this morning (9/7/2020) and with historical fire perimeters to show how much of Poudre Canyon has burned.

 

[gungriffin]

So this might is one of the biggest fires by total acreage in Colorado's history?

 

[Inukshuk]

Inciweb at 4:55 PM today has it at 89,000 acres!

#5 largest by Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Colorado_wildfires
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6964/
https://www.facebook.com/CameronPeakFire/

 

[Inukshuk]

Explosive growth today

https://nifc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/M...bb13ygVRJr8zXR1X5eohlE-MLrTTslpdG82B4gKn9PQGc

 

[DaveInDenver]

So this might is one of the biggest fires by total acreage in Colorado's history?

It's big, 89,000 acres now, but the largest in history is the 2020 Pine Gulch here north of Grand Junction at 139,000 acres. It could grow but perhaps the upcoming weather will damp all of them, too.

 

[gungriffin]

Wow. This is not good. It is tough for me to make sense of some of these numbers they are getting so large. 90k acres is almost 135 square miles! The Wikipedia page has it at 5% contained. Here is to hoping for a lot of snow and precipitation in this storm on Tuesday.

 

[AlpineAccess]

96.5k as of an hour ago. This has to be some of the most extreme fire behavior recorded. I have never heard of 60k in a day.

They just announced mandatory evacuations all the way to horsetooth reservoir. 20 minute drive from our house. Unreal.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Burned the Wilderness and Mummy Range up to the High Park scar and looks like it's blowing down Poudre canyon and May Creek this evening. So lots of downslope wind over there? The boundaries and precise acreage will update overnight with IR over flights, if they can do them and keep up. The Pine Gulch was the same way, blowing up tens of thousands of acres in a day for a while. It has been dry here, 0.05" of rain in all of July and 2.98" so far in 2020, which is -3.1" from normal, and only 0.6" since June 1.

 

[AlpineAccess]

We backpack the high park fire scar and that area has a ton of leftover fuel as well. It's still a very flammable section, I'm worried it will run there even with the snow coming in.

 

[SteveH]

I spent the weekend in Glen Haven at the family cabin. Lots of ash fallout and poor air quality. I had no idea how much it had grown until I got back today and saw the Inciweb page. Ouch. Hoping for much snow and rain.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Mapped at 102,700 acres this morning. Looks like it hasn't run into High Park overnight.

 

[AlpineAccess]

Mapped at 102,700 acres this morning. Looks like it hasn't run into High Park overnight.

But wow did that fire line widen over towards Red Feather. I see why they evacuated there so early - the area is a tinderbox and from pulling firewood permits and cutting a few cords there over the last couple of years I can say it burns super hot.

South border, the Mummy's are broad shouldered above tree line and well defined. Snow could help knock down spotting fires but I heard that yesterday air drops were vaporizing before hitting ground from the heat of the fire so there will be a lot of latent burning that will fire back up as soon as the wind picks up again. It would be devastating to see this hit the Dunraven area and the wilderness areas there.

It's going to take a lot of precipitation and low winds to get this thing stopped.

Just saw the announcement that to only make things worse they now have a COVID outbreak in the crews working the fire.

 

[On the RX]

I got a text from a friend in Greely last night around 8pm that the winds really kicked up in front of the cold front.
When we camped up around red feather lake last summer I commented that it was a tinder box just waiting to go. It was nearly impossible to walk off trail in the area we camped due to all the dead fall.