Steve Quayle News Alerts

By Joe Garner
April 23, 2002

The next two months will be critical in determining wildfire conditions for the entire burning season, meteorologists and fire managers said Monday.

At a somber meeting, they agreed Colorado has been plunged into an unusually early fire season. Some multiagency firefighting centers already are staffed seven days a week, which typically does not occur until June, to attack fires fueled by drought, shallow snowpack, blustery winds and dense undergrowth.

"The weekend precipitation did not do anything to alleviate the fire danger," said Patrick O'Leary, manager of the Rocky Mountain Coordination Center.

O'Leary said the Topaz Mountain Fire 10 miles southeast of Bailey in Park County, a 350-acre blaze that was 50 percent contained Monday, was a troublesome omen of the 2002 fire season.

"It's burning actively in heavy fuels at 11,000 feet, and that shouldn't be happening this time of year," he said. "It should be covered with snow."

Park County authorities Monday also reported a grass fire started by a welder's spark was 60 percent contained. It destroyed six structures, including a barn and shed, on the Newkirch Ranch nine miles south of Fairplay.

A blaze that started Monday afternoon burned at least 600 acres of pasture land about five miles northeast of Denver International Airport before it was controlled.

Contributing to the fire danger is the early melt of the winter's meager snowfields. Long-range forecasters are divided over the chance for precipitation in the next eight to 10 weeks -- the period until monsoon rains typically arrive to drench Colorado on summer afternoons.

"Even if we have rains in May, we will start June at a (precipitation) deficit," said Tim Mathewson, a meteorologist with the Bureau of Land Management. "And June is when it begins to heat up."

Mathewson said the greatest concern for forest fires is across the southern one-third of the state, plus along the Front Range from Pueblo to Fort Collins.

"The forecasted weather should prevent another 2000 (the last major wildfire season in Colorado)," Mathewson said. "But the concern has to be from now until the monsoon sets in."

However, National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Leszcynski said he was more pessimistic about the fire season, especially that monsoons will rescue Colorado from a summer inferno, because experts are so divided in their forecasts.

"Even the three or four inches of snow over the weekend was to me, if you will pardon the expression, a red flag," he said.

Given the inconclusive forecasts, "We may have a bad fire season, or we may not," said Tom Grier, director of the Colorado Office of Emergency Management, trying to summarize the predictions.

Adding to the concerns, fire managers said they expect to be short-handed fighting wildfires, partly because military personnel, including the National Guard, have been assigned to help fight the war on terrorism.

"We expect to have shortages at all levels of fire management," said Rich Homann, fire division supervisor of the Colorado State Forest Service. "All fire managers will have to pay attention to allocating scarce resources in fighting this year's fires."

http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_1104328,00.html