Literally and figuratively. Yesterday the weather station about a mile south of my work recorded a high of 109.9, average is around 80 and I know a lot of people who don't have air conditioning in their apartments or homes. Then there's the actual fires. That High Park fire? 82,000 acres, hundreds of homes destroyed and below 50% containment with red flag wind warnings today. Woodland Heights fire? Burned 20 homes within the city limits of Estes Park (at the base of Rocky Mountain National Park). The latest one, Waldo Canyon fire? Forced the evacuation of the entire town of Manitou Springs and surrounding unincorporated areas at the base of Pikes Peak (8,000 people or so) and is 0% contained at 2000 acres. The best part? There's a couple jackasses that have been caught starting fires up in the mountains. I understand that this is how the ecosystem has worked here for thousands of years but it doesn't really need any help, certainly not when we're not going to go below 100 for another week or so.
I saw the extreem temps on the news...... ouch! My mom went to SE Colorado and the smoke was bad. When they got there, a huge assed thunderstorm hit with hail the size of golf balls. That was last week. Fires like that are no laughing matter. The worst one we had in recent times was a half million acres and it blackened some pristine wilderness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuit_Fire It was like your fires, but they all grew together to form a massive one. One thing the wiki doesn't cite, is the policy of the forest service to let lightning fires run their coarse and concentrate on man made fires for suppresion. This is what the environmentalists lobbied for. All my firefighter friends got really pissed because they're watching thier mountains burn while being told to sit on their asses and let it burn because it was a natural event.
No shit? Is the climate usually pretty mild there or something? Around here even poor folks have air conditioning, it's ubiquitous.
Summers usually only hit the 90s for a week or two in August. Found average temps for Denver on weather.com. One thing to note to is that Denver is an arid environment (nosebleeds are fucking frequent because of it) so cold and hot usually don't feel as ridiculous as the more humid parts but after a certain point it's still fucking hot. In Denver it's also mostly the older parts of town that lack air conditioning as the buildings are 60+ years old and were built without central air. Luckily a lot of them are the "hip" or "up and coming" (read: gentrifying) areas so they have a large proportion of younger individuals living there.
Just checked FB this morning and an old classmate lost her house to the Woodland Heights fire. I heard it's finally started raining out there at least. My cousin is in Ft. Collins and said it was pouring.
Fourth day setting a record high with tomorrow to be just as hot, glad I slept through it today. No rain in the South Suburbs and I guess they let Manitou go home even though the fire wasn't contained at all still.
geeze, I hope we don't get those fires this year. That is something I worry about every summer. It'd seem that the fire crews there, are doing a great job steering the carnage around home thus far.
Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy are under pre and mandatory evacuation: The resort just west of Garden of the Gods This is part of the city and where my ex used to live: Edit: Parts of Boulder are under evac because: Edit 2: They closed the interstate at the north end of Colorado Springs which is the only freeway in or out.
Colorado heat is dry heat. Hot there isn't HOT like we have here, our hot is ...HOT because of the humidity. That's the one thing I liked about being out west, no humidity. They just have regular hot, not capital letters hot.
Here's one my cousin put on her Facebook wall. Not sure if she took it or if it's just from the internet. I just thought it was crazy how lit up the area was.
fuckinay! that's intense! It's really bad when it gets to residential areas. At least here, it's real sparsely populated for the most part. It's a hazard affluent people take on when they have to have the house on the hill. It gets real dangerouse when the only exit gets shut down. I sure hope everyone can get out if needed. Many of our local crews are over there on the fire lines along with our local Ericson corp skycranes. Thankfully, the lightning storms that went through here the last few days were accompanied by a lot of rain prior to the strikes. this left the couple hundred guys to stay there and fight the good fight. Thank god we don't have the humidity that there is down south. I don't envy you guys with >70% humidity at all. Though, high humidity would help fight those fires.
Not mine, not yet at least. Still a full county away but given that it doubled overnight who knows. My cousin has been evacuated twice now, is located the 'O' in mandatory. That's pretty much where the picture nameless posted is. The Colorado Springs paper has a decent Google maps markup of fire and evacuation locations. My uncle's place is just outside of the southwest edge of the yellow pre-evacuation area up north of the fire which is the southwestern part of my county, Douglas County.
That includes my uncle's place. He's on the way home to prepare. Thunderstorms are rolling in currently as well which are a mixed blessing. Cooler air and moisture helps but the lightning has been starting fires.
Those pictures are nuts. It's crazy to look at those typical suburban homes up in flames, especially the one in the driveway. Hope they have good home insurance policies (not trying to be a dick).
They described earlier that entire city blocks were gone. Space Command apparently authorized the Hot Shots out of Vandenberg AFB, which is cool I guess but not sure that 19 more firefighters are going to give an edge to the few thousand already working it.
Holy shit! Scary, scary stuff. This is why I have online backup of my shit in addition to USB. I can grab my kids and cat and run like hell, no need to worry about our family pictures or anything.
That is a great justification for cloud based backup. Watch the marketing come into play after this catastrophy.
This is pretty much the difference between the southern part of the state and the Denver area: Edit: 1 confirmed dead, 1 missing. 5 people arrested for theft and trespassing into evacuation areas. New fire burning up in Eagle County in the mountains. 10,000 acres since it's start from lightning strike during yesterdays storms which is two-thirds the size of the Waldo Canyon fire by Colorado Springs, in less than a day. Apparently 50 gas pads are threatened, no idea what exactly those are or if they're likely to blow up. Oh and people are super pissed at the fire department for "letting this happen". Like they could have prevented a sudden wind shift causing 60 foot flames with 50-70 mph hour gusts in 100+ degree heat with less than 10% humidity. Edit 2: Denver Post got some aerial shots today apparently. I tried to not post any that showed duplicate "structures":
