Here are some more pictures from Anna's Blog excessivevelocity that I told you about before. They are taken in the general area of Northern Colorado back in 2009 where the big wildfire has been burning for 12 days. That was a wetter year, so the brush and grass was green.



Those are lodgepole pines, and you can see how a fire could spread through them easily.



There are areas of open grass up there, but this year it is really dry, with a layer of dry dead grass on the ground with a light veneer of green grass above it. We have the same conditions here. A person would think these open areas would have acted as a sort of fire break, but not in these dry conditions; all it did was slow the fire down as it crawled across to the next stand of trees.



Back in 2009, the trees were probably their normal 90% moisture, and now they are less than 45%. This morning, there is a 75% chance of ignition in unshaded fuels, and 50% in shaded fuels.

The fire area is currently 59,845 acres, 55% contained with 189 homes burned. Thousands of people and animals have been evacuated, some have been allowed to go back home, and some were re-evacuated.

Yesterday the UPS guy was telling me about how they handled deliveries in previous disaster situations: the packages were stored in a semi truck until people were ready to pick them up. He drew a 189 in the dust on his truck and said 'There's 189 less customers up there for quite a while to come.'





You can see the burned hills behind this oasis:



This is Horsetooth Reservoir the second night of the fire:



Horsetooth is right next to the city of Fort Collins, so too close for comfort.