Yesterday afternoon, Metro Denver baked under a relentless sun and clear blue skies. The air temperature was 99 degrees F, the humidity was 4% and a gusty west wind produced the feel of a blast furnace.
I was thus surprised to see an apparent thunderstorm boiling up to our SSE, offering hope that our intense heat might soon be squelched by a line of storms. Tuning into the Weather Channel to check the regional radar, the cause for the "storm clouds" was soon apparent; they were reporting on a large wildfire in the Black Forest, northeast of Colorado Springs, and footage from a news chopper showed a dozen homes engulfed in flames. The Black Forest, named for the dark appearance of its ponderosa pines from the adjacent plains, owes its existence to its location on the Palmer Divide ridge (elevation 7500 feet), which receives upslope moisture from both the north and the south; an impermeable layer of sandstone, several feet below the surface also creates a reservoir effect, retaining soil moisture that is sufficient to support the pine forest.
Unfortunately, due to the prolonged drought in southeastern Colorado, the Black Forest has been ripe for a wildfire and this week's hot, dry, windy weather only aggravated the conditions. While the cause of the fire, some 60 miles SSE of our Littleton farm, remains uncertain, there were no thunderstorms along the Front Range at the time of its development; indeed, the massive plume from the wildfire produced the only image on the radar. Wildfires, destructive as they may be, play an important role in the health of many natural ecosystems; however, when they are man-induced, their effects are especially tragic. As of this morning, 60 homes have been lost.
