From Water for Colorado:

It’s been said we no longer have fire seasons; we have fire years.

We all remember a year ago when fires ravaged our state and smoke choked the Colorado skies, leading to some of the most unhealthy air quality in the world and making the atmosphere glow red. Many of us remember checking in on friends and family, preparing go-bags in case the unthinkable happened, and watching flames tear through communities and places that had once been peaceful locations for recreation and communal gathering.

The same pattern has begun again.

What might not have been immediately obvious is that those fires have had long-term and damaging impacts on our natural infrastructure — watersheds, rivers, and waterways — hurting native fish populations, sending water quality to dangerously low levels, and weakening local economies. And, before Colorado has even begun to recover from last year’s devastating fire season — which saw the three largest fires in state history — fires have already started this year on the West Slope, forcing evacuations, road closures, and more. The recovery efforts and specter of last year’s blazes are still present as we begin to grapple with another intense and potentially catastrophic year. One bad fire season perpetuates another, and the cycle continues.

Of course, fire is a natural part of a healthy forest ecosystem, and serves an ecological purpose; however, fire severity and frequency has been exacerbated by a combination of historical fire suppression and climate change. Today’s fires behave differently — and more destructively — than the type of fire that’s critical to forests’ ecosystems. This is why drought resilience and preparedness coupled with thoughtful wildfire mitigation and watershed restoration are all essential to prioritize; and why we’re grateful for the upwards of $65 million put towards these issues by the Colorado General Assembly and signed by Governor Polis this year. Moreover, at a recent convening of the Western Governors’ Association, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris reinforced the need for — and their support of — greater resilience to climate change, drought, and wildfire. Local, state, and federal lawmakers are increasingly recognizing the urgency of our climate, drought, and fire crises, and understand the urgent need to work together now to address it.

Impacts Far and Wide to Our Rivers and Water

The effects of wildfires go well beyond the local burn scar; they impact entire watersheds and ecosystems, often for years. For example, the recent string of mudslides along the I-70 corridor in Glenwood Canyon and elsewhere throughout the state are the direct result of fire-damaged soil that can’t soak up heavy rains fast enough. The lack of tree root structure combined with dry soil leads to mudslides, causing infrastructure damage and, at its worst, loss of life.

Within streams, rivers, and riparian areas, the debris left behind by fires can impact water quality and fish health. Ash and debris flow into nearby waterways following fires, and often overwhelm water treatment plants, fill reservoirs with sediment, or lead to the need for costly repairs and maintenance. Around 80% of the United States’ freshwater supply flows from forested areas, which means forest fires will leave burn scars, ash, and other contaminants in watersheds, runoff from which will ultimately make its way into water treatment centers that send water to our homes.

In healthy forests, natural infrastructure acts as a filter for sediment and other pollutants that could otherwise wash downstream. In burn scars, where foliage and root systems are either gone or struggling to come back, this nature-based filtration system no longer exists. This puts even more pressure on towns and municipalities to treat contaminated water. (Following the 2002 Hayman Fire over 175,000 trees were planted in the South Platte River watershed to bolster natural infrastructure in the basin. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, and the water quality remains below average.)

Fish, too, are dramatically impacted by fires both during and after the acute burn period. When a fire burns near a riverbed, heat causes the water temperatures to rise, oftentimes past the point that fish can reproduce or even survive. Changes to water chemistry during and after fires can cause devastating algal blooms and make the aquatic environment’s pH inhospitable to other life. A scientist studying the aftermath of a fire in alpine lakes discovered that the area’s fish had five times the amount of mercury as fish that weren’t affected by fire. And, the sediment runoff damages fish habitats and hurts the fishes’ ability to feed or reproduce. In 2018, following the 416 Fire, scientists estimated that around 80% of the Animas River’s fish population died off due to flooding and debris.

When fish are impacted by wildfires, the people, industries, and communities that rely on healthy fish populations also suffer. This summer, Colorado Parks and Wildlife asked anglers not to fish along a 120-mile stretch of the Colorado River due to high temperatures, low flows, and sediment runoff from wildfires, all of which are making it more difficult for fish to survive.

Prolonged drought only leads to a greater chance of fire, with dry forests and blistering temperatures. Governor Polis recently declared a State of Emergency in Western Colorado as the area enters its second consecutive year of “exceptional” drought — the highest classification given by the U.S. Drought Monitor — and a long-term megadrought continues to grip the entire Western United States.

What can we do to protect our rivers?

Understanding that fires, rivers, and communities exist within a connected ecosystem is the first step to mitigating the long-term impacts of drought and wildfire. The fires that hurt our towns, agricultural land, and favorite recreation areas also harm our rivers, watersheds, wetlands, and wildlife.

To ensure Colorado is ready to meet the challenges to our rivers and waterways posed by more severe and intense wildfires, we need to:

Work to ensure the Colorado Water Plan 2022 update reflects the need for an inter-connected understanding and management of watersheds, forests, and ecosystems. All of us need clean and reliable water, and for that we need healthy watersheds. Environmental priorities should be considered in every section of the Water Plan, as all other water needs are direct

ly related to water flowing from resilient, healthy, natural systems.

Educate ourselves and our friends, family, and community members about fire safety; and use that knowledge to work conscientiously on our own actions and impacts to reduce the risk of fire in our neighborhood watersheds.

Prioritize funding and continue to urge state, local, and federal lawmakers to increase funding and capacity for wildfire mitigation, prevention, and research and resilience to climate change, ensuring that state programs have the money necessary to develop and implement new strategies to address our ever-expanding wildfire seasons.

Things might seem dire, and they are. We must take action. There are steps we can take right now to reduce the risks wildfires pose to Colorado’s rivers. One such step is visiting the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s website and providing comments on the upcoming 2022 Water Plan update to ensure that environmental needs are met and that the Water Plan treats forests and rivers as the intertwined ecosystem they are.

This need for action and availability of solutions should increase our urgency and inspire us to work diligently towards resilience to climate change to ensure the health of our waters and watersheds now and into the future.

The Calwood Fire approaches Boulder, CO. Photo credit: Malachi Brooks via Water for Colorado

Smoke from the East Troublesome fire looms over Granby Reservoir. Photo credit: Evan Wise via Water for Colorado

Bent lodgepole pine in some areas revealed intensity of the wind. Photo/National Park Service via Big Pivots

Photo credit: Sylvan Fire Information Facebook page

This sign along the highway between Craig and Dinosaur, in northwestern Colorado, tells of a fire in 1988 that burned 15,000 acres, then the most in Colorado’s recorded history. The Cameron Peak Fire in 2020 burned nearly 209,000 acres. Photo credit: Allen Best via Big Pivots

From Big Pivots (Allen Best):

Colorado’s scariest wildfire in 2020 was not its largest. East Troublesome shocked because of its sprint and then its leap. It grew by 87,000 acres in a fiery dash across the headwaters of the Colorado River and past Grand Lake, most of that in just a couple hours. Smoke plumes rose 40,000 feet. The winds, variously estimated at 50 to 100 mph, were strong enough to bend over lodgepole pines.

Then embers vaulted across two miles of treeless tundra at the Continental Divide, raining into the Estes Valley, Red flags early & often
Five red flag warning days had been issued by the National Weather Service in Routt County, reported the Steamboat Pilot in its June 22 issue, compared to 9 in all of 2020.

To the west in Moffat County, 18 red-flag warnings had been issued compared to 25 all of last year.

The Pilot explained that red flag warnings are based on metrics that include humidity, wind, how long conditions are forecast to last and how dry some of the fuels, like grasses, are in an area. When issued, the warnings mean conditions make fires more likely to start and spread at the eastern gate to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Nothing like this had ever occurred in modern Colorado history.

Eight months later, Colorado again had something extraordinary, a record-smashing heat wave in mid-June. Two Colorado towns, Alamosa and Cortez, had six consecutive days of record high temperatures. Leadville, Grand Lake, Dillon, and Del Norte had five straight days of record highs. In Vail, one town employee reported having gone to South Carolina to see a son—and being shocked to find the heat was no worse than that of Eagle County.

It’s not just new temperature records, but the jumps. Grand Junction, for example, shattered an old record by 4 degrees.

In the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, the margins were even greater. Portland’s all-time high of 107 degrees was obliterated, with a new record of 112 degrees.

More shocking was the heat in British Columbia. “If you were drawing up a list of possible locations for hell on Earth before this week, the small mountain village of Lytton in Canada would probably not have entered your mind,” said the Guardian on July 3. The community of 250 people in the foothills of two mountain ranges registered a high of 121 degrees, surpassing anything ever recorded in Las Vegas and tying the all-time record in Death Valley.

Both phenomena—the East Troublesome Fire and the heat domes of June and early July—are likely manifestations of the warming climate.

It’s going to get worse, warn climate scientists, much worse. Temperatures will rise. Wildfires will become larger, more unpredictable. Welcome to the age of megafires.

In the steps of California

California has been getting megafires and, inevitably, so will Colorado, says Mark Novak, the Vail fire chief. When that happens—most likely in the next 10 to 15 years, he believes—Colorado will look back on East Troublesome and other fires during the shocking 2020 fire season as, well, not so shocking.

“I can’t tell you exactly at what point,” says Novak, “but we will look back and say, ‘Remember when Pine Gulch (a 2020 fire near Grand Junction) and East Troublesome seemed like a really big fire?’”

Before arriving in Vail in 2014, Novak saw a progression during his 30-year career on the West Coast.

“What we’re seeing today in Colorado is very similar to what California was seeing in the early years of the 2000s, from 2003 to 2007,” says Novak. “I believe that in 10 to 15 years we will see the same type of fire that California was seeing in 2017, 2018 and 2020. I think that (East Troublesome) was just the first case of what we will see in the future.”

In November, just weeks after the East Troublesome made its run, Novak told Vail Town Council members their community can someday expect something similar.

“I am here to tell you that fire burned extremely well and extremely fast through every fuel type,” he said. “It burned literally through aspen groves, it burned through beetle kill, it burned through green stands, it burned through sage (brush). It burned through farmers’ fields that were stubble. This was not necessarily a beetle-kill problem,” he said. “We should not rationalize that this kind of fire would not occur in Vail.”

“You scare me to death every time you speak,” a town council member responded.

Colorado, like California, has been seeing progressively larger fires, but on a different order of magnitude.

As Colorado’s ski areas came of age after World War II, fires were rare. There were fires, such as the one in 1994 west of Glenwood Springs that killed 14 firefighters amid the pinyon and juniper covered hillsides of Storm King Mountain. But in Vail, Aspen, and other headwater communities, wildfires were so distant that little attention was paid to flammability of buildings. In Vail, shake shingles were required. In Summit County, regulations discouraged removal of trees.

Fires in the 21st century have been larger, more frequent, and more destructive.

The year 2002 was a harbinger. A dry winter was followed by a warm and windy spring. In early June, three wildfires broke out almost instantaneously, one of them the Coal Seam Fire in Glenwood Springs. Surveying the state’s forests by planes that first Sunday, Colorado’s governor, Bill Owens, solemnly told reporters, “All of Colorado is on fire.”

The governor was widely ridiculed, but since then most of the state has been on fire. Most damaging were blazes in the foothills along the Front Range urban corridor. The Fourmile Canyon Fire west of Boulder destroyed 172 homes and other structures in 2010, the most destructive wildfire to that time. Then came 2012, hot and dry. High Park Fire killed one person and destroyed 248 homes west of Fort Collins. Days later, the Waldo Canyon Fire killed two people and destroyed 346 homes on the outskirts of Colorado Springs.

Flames have begun to singe Aspen, Vail, and other ski towns. In 2018, the Lake Christine Fire in the El Jebel-Basalt area incinerated 12,588 acres and nearly shut down electrical deliveries to Aspen during the Fourth of July weekend. Another fire, Grizzly Creek, shut down Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon for almost six weeks in 2020.

Fires covered fewer than 100,000 acres during the decade of the 1970s. Just last year, 650,000 acres burned in Colorado (and another 176,000-acre fire burned in a border-straddling fire that was mostly in Wyoming).

California covers a third n more ground than Colorado. But the area burned last year, 4.4 million acres, was six times that of Colorado.

Vail’s Novak began his career fighting fires in the San Diego area in 1984. At the time, fires of 5,000 to 10,000 acres were considered large.

In 1990, he relocated to the Lake Tahoe Basin, on the California-Nevada border. The year 2007 was a pivotal one. One of the houses he had grown up in Southern California burned. At Tahoe, a major fire called Angora burned 250 houses within four hours. One of his children’s teachers lost her home, as did firefighters and police officers. Wildfire, more than before, had become personal to Novak.

Angora provoked a shift in attitudes in the Tahoe Basin. Forest thinning, which had been adamantly opposed, became more accepted. That fire now doesn’t make California’s top lists based on size, destruction, or deaths. The largest to date was 2020’s August Complex Fire, which covered more than a million acres, followed by the Mendocino Complex Fire of July 2018 that burned 459,000 acres. Deadliest was later that year. The Camp inferno killed 88 people at Paradise. Many others have killed 10, 15, or 25 at a time.

Hot and dry, off the charts

Fire in Colorado’s Rockies, as in California’s Sierra Nevada, has always been a part of forest ecosystems.

The frequency varies depending upon vegetation. In the foothills above the Front Range urban corridor, forests of Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir evolved with low-intensity, fast-moving fires that occurred every few decades.

On the Western Slope, in places like Aspen and Vail, the fires have historically occurred every 120 to 250 years. Frequency increases in the lower-elevation pinyon and juniper forests. Intervals in the higher-elevation spruce and fir forests lengthen to 400 years or more.

Fires are natural. Even big fires are natural, as charcoal collected from the mud of lakes and the scars of trees demonstrate. What we see now is not natural.

It begins with rising temperatures. The Colorado River Basin—including Aspen and Vail and the location of the East Troublesome Fire—have warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 2000 as compared to the 20th century average. This, according to a report by Western Water Assessment, is likely warmer than at any time in the past 2,000 years.

A 2009 paper by Connie Woodhouse, of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and others, compared the 21st century warming with a notably warm period of 1,000 years ago. During that period from 900 to 1300 AD, the Northern Hemisphere was warmer than all but the most recent decades. Drought was a companion. The worst 10-year period was 1146 to 1155. That, perhaps not incidentally, was about the time the ancestral Pueblo – as the Anasazi are now more commonly called—began emigrating from the Four Corners area.

Mike Metcalf, an archaeologist based in Eagle, takes the long view. His work has examined human habitation of Colorado and other Western states since the glaciers rapidly retreated 13,500 years ago. “Somebody who has studied climate tends to be skeptical of simplistic explanations,” he says. “There are so many things, so many variables that control climate.”

But the warming and consequent aridification of the last few decades defy conventional explanations. “The amount of drought in the West is off the charts,” says Metcalf.

A study published in 2020 in the journal Science concluded that climate change has made drought conditions 46% worse between 2000 and 2018.
Drought, as conventionally understood, no longer serves a useful purpose in describing what is being measured. Instead, some are using the word “aridification.” The effect can be seen in the reduced runoffs of the Colorado River into Lake Powell. The river flowed 543,000 acre-feet this year, compared to the May average of 2.34 million acre-feet since Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966. In 2020, the winter snowpack was actually pretty good, but the runoff was subpar. This year, with drying soils sopping up more amounts of moisture, the fast-falling levels in the giant reservoirs in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada have become a national story. As Metcalf points out, the trends just keep accelerating.

Now comes new evidence that high-elevation forests in Colorado since 2000 have burned at a rate greater than at any time in the past 2,000 years. To draw this conclusion, the University of Montana’s Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist, and two colleagues waded into the work of paleoecologists who had plumbed the depths of 20 lakes to document the fire history.

Twelve of the lakes were in the Park Range near Steamboat Springs. Others lakes were on the southeast side of Rocky Mountain National Park, near Estes Park.

Comparing the fire record of recent years with that 2,000-year history, Higuera and his co-authors, the University of Wyoming’s Bryan Shuman and University of Montana doctoral candidate Kyra Wolf, came up with a startling conclusion: The frequency of fire in high-elevation forest has shrunk from once every 230 years on average in the last two millennia to about 120 years during the current century.

Warm, dry conditions provide the overarching cause of increased burning in high-elevation forests.

“It isn’t unexpected to have more fire as temperatures rise,” said Wolf, the co-author. “Our records show that fire tracked past variations in climate just as it does today. What’s striking is that temperatures and correspondingly fire are now exceeding the range that these forests have coped with for thousands of years—largely as a result of human-caused climate change.”

This wasn’t necessarily unexpected, although the timing may be. For decades, scientists have predicted that climate warming will increase wildfire activity in high-elevation forests beyond the historical range of experience, said Higuera—who spoke in March at a session sponsored by Carbondale’s Wilderness Workshop.

“It’s sobering to see that it’s clearly happening, and early in the 21st century—not in 2050, not in 2075, but in 2020,” he said.

Very limited tool box

We don’t know exactly how hot it will get. That’s partly because we don’t know whether the atmospheric pollution can be bent down. The rate of accumulating carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, has not abated in the 21st century even as the science around the risk has solidified.

We’re polluting the sky as if there were no tomorrow. The observatory located at an elevation of 11,135 feet at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa has documented the pollution of carbon dioxide. CO2 levels in 1958 stood at 320 parts per million, a relatively modest increase from pre-industrial times. In 2013 the levels surpassed 400 ppm This year its hit 420.

Staying in this fast lane, what temperatures will that produce in Aspen, Vail, and other ski towns in Colorado? A study expected to be issued later in July will paint a more definitive picture of that future heating in headwater communities.

A 2016 study along the northern Front Range by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization delivers a glimpse of that hotter future. Fourteen days with temperatures greater than 80 degrees were recorded during the late 20th century at a site in the foothills west of Boulder comparable in elevation to Aspen and Vail. This is projected to more than double in the next decade or two. By the time today’s toddlers reach retirement age, there will be 100 days.

“We will be hotter and we will be drier,” says Stephen Saunders, a former undersecretary in the Department of the Interior who was the lead author of that study. “If you have increased temperature and the same amount of precipitation, you will indeed be drier.”

That observation was demonstrated last week in a PowerPoint presentation by Russ Schumacher, the Colorado state climatologist. The first slide shows standardized precipitation index for Colorado since 1900. There are periods of wet and periods of dry—including during the 21st century. But the standardized evaporation-transpiration chart—transpiration is what a plant “exhales” in response to heat—tells a very different story during the 21st century. There are no peaks in the 21st century; only valleys of drought. The warming atmosphere is absorbing moisture from the ground and from vegetation.

Measurements conducted by federal agencies at the Garfield County Airport in Rifle, on Hardscrabble Mountain near Eagle and in Summit County bear this out. One measure of the dryness, called the thousand-hour test, showed the moisture content in wood on Hardscrabble dropping from 12% on June 1 to just 8% at mid-month. “From a wildfire behavior standpoint, you don’t necessarily like to see 8%,” said Ryan Hughes, a fuels specialist for the U.S. Forest Service. Five days later after that measurement, the Sylvan Lake Fire broke out south of Eagle.

Tom Veblen, now a professor emeritus of forest ecology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has studied wildfires in Colorado from almost every angle: tree rings, lake deposits, journals of explorers and 19th century newspaper accounts. We know 1847 was a fiery year, and so was 1851.

Also 1879, the year that Vail’s Back Bowls became mostly treeless, the result supposedly of “spite” fires set by Ute Indians, although the evidence is lacking, he says. It was a dry year, the only time fires in high-elevation forests spread, and fires and prospectors were everywhere—including, at that point, in the hamlet that soon became Aspen.

What annoys Veblen most is the phrase “healthy forests.” The metaphor, contained in the title of a 2004 federal law and also a 2021 Colorado law, powerfully draws on an analogy to human health. It also misleads in the context of high-elevation forests, says Veblen, and it was misused, he says, to characterize the East Troublesome Fire.

Areas covered by East Troublesome included large swaths of trees killed by bark beetles during an epidemic of the last 25 years. If bark beetles always have been in a fandango with forests, they came on particularly strong with rising temperatures and drought in the 21st century. The argument has been made that those trees killed by beetles need to be removed, to abate fire danger. Scientific studies in the last decade don’t leave that idea standing. One of them, by Hart and colleagues in 2015, found that prior beetle kill is not causing an increase in the extent or severity of fires of Western states.

“The fuels are the needles,” explains Veblen. “Once needles turn (red) and fall to the ground, to the forest floor, we actually have a decline in the ability of fires to spread through the crowns, through the canopy of the forest,” he says.

“What we are seeing is an increase in fire, yes, and an increase in bark beetle activity, both of which are driven by climate change, both driven by warmer conditions.

“Within the research community and also within the fire management community over the last 5 to 10 years there has been a greater realization how all of those changes are being driven by climate change,” he says. “But there is still a tendency to hold onto some of the old narrative.”

Thinning of forests, he says, has little value except in areas adjacent to communities and structures. “The people in the fire mitigation business are very motivated to use the tools they have, but those tools are very, very limited.”

Heat domes and climate change

There’s no escaping the rising temperatures. If the atmospheric emissions ended tomorrow, temperatures will continue rising for decades. “That is baked into our system,” says Veblen.

“It’s just going to get hotter,” says Brad Udall, a climate scientist at Colorado State University who has conducted ground-breaking research on aridification of the Colorado River Basin. His 2016 study with Jonathan Overpeck found that roughly half of the “drought” could be attributed to rising temperatures. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Colorado was hot last August when the Cameron Peak Fire broke out in the Medicine Bow Range, north of Rocky Mountain National Park. Another fire, the Williams Fork, broke out about the same time in the area north of the Eisenhower Tunnel. For a time, those in Winter Park and Fraser worried that the fire might sweep across the Vasquez Range and make a run on their communities.

Another heat wave engulfed Colorado last September, if nowhere near as intense as those of June, either in the Southwest or in the Pacific Northwest.

“Increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves are where probably the most robust connection exists between a warming climate and extreme weather,” says Schumacher, the state climatologist. “Numerous studies of heat waves in different parts of the world have shown that they have become much more likely. It takes a particular weather pattern to set up for something like this to happen (in this case, the very strong high pressure or heat dome), but all indications are that these situations are made more likely by climate change.”

Writing in the New York Times last week, former Roaring Fork Valley resident Susan Joy Hassol made the same point in an essay co-authored with climate scientist Michael Mann. “Record-breaking hot months are occurring five times more often than would be expected without global warming,” they wrote.

In Colorado, this shift seems to be playing out by extending the “hot season,” says Schumacher.

The East Troublesome fits in with that pattern of lengthening wildfire season, 75 days longer than in the 1970s. It broke out on Oct. 14, the last day of the first rifle-hunting season. It spread somewhat slowly from a remote area between Kremmling and Grand Lake for almost a week. Then, on Oct. 20, came the winds, hot and fast, by some estimates 100 mph. It’s likely a miracle that only two lives were lost that evening, those of two elderly people who had chosen to shelter in place.

“When you get fire behavior like that, there’s not a whole lot you can do to stop it,” said one firefighter. “That’s equivalent to trying to do something with a Category 5 hurricane.”

The wind and the heat picked up twigs and needles and lofted them across the Continental Divide. Grand Lake, at the west entrance, escaped serious damage, likely the result of mitigation work done over the last decade. But lodgepole pine near the entrance to the national park just a few miles away testify to the heat and the winds, drooping like spaghetti.

Estes Park itself appeared sure to go up in flames as both the Troublesome and Cameron Peak fires approached. Sharon Brubaker, among the 6,700 residents of the community, didn’t wait to find out. She loaded her 2-year-old grandson into her car and fled, despite fears of another threat: covid. “It was a gut reaction,” said Brubaker. “I looked at the sky and I knew that I needed to get out of here.”

Novak, the fire chief in Vail, had been working the Cameron Peak Fire, helping defend homes. When the flames came roaring at them, they abandoned the effort. That, he says, is the philosophy of firefighters in Vail and elsewhere. They will prep and leave, not stay and defend.

Later, talking to his town council, Novak emphasized that Vail could easily see the same congruence of weather that caused East Troublesome’s extreme fire behavior. A fire starting in Eagle or Gypsum could roar up the valley through Vail and across Vail Pass into Summit County. That’s what happens in megafires—or a gigafire, as California’s first million-acre fire has been called.
Paul Cada helped protect the YMCA of the Rockies near Estes Park as the East Troublesome fire roared in. “I saw what extreme fire looks like when it was coming into Estes Park,” he says.

Since 2014, Cada has worked in Vail as the town’s wildland program manager. It has been his job very fundamentally to prepare Vail for fire.

Vail, like other mountain communities, has evolved what it considers a mountain aesthetic. Wooden shake shingles, long a manifestation of that aesthetic, were banned on new housing in 2007. In 2020, the town adopted a new wildfire plan. Newer building codes require masonry exteriors and frown on decks that could be ignited by embers thrown from a mile away, as occurred in East Troublesome.

Some changes have been painful, facing opposition. One of them significantly discourages use of vegetation amid houses, rows of trees—that might catch on fire. Houses need strong fire-resistant berths of 30 to 60 feet.

A former Forest Service ranger likened Vail’s response at one time of wanting to fire-proof the forest so that houses could be put amid the trees. Now, there’s a new approach—one that doesn’t totally preclude fire, but can improve the odds.

“You don’t necessarily have to control extreme fire behavior to prevent significant loss to a community,” he says. “What you do need to do is prepare the community for that, and that’s really the approach we are taking in Vail. We are not necessarily able to stop or even control the extreme fire behavior that we will likely see one day. It’s about making sure our community is prepared to respond to it when it happens but also be able to bounce back as quickly as possible.”

Vail has been aggressively trying to reduce fire risk along its flanks as well as in its subdivisions. Even so, both Cada and Nowak emphasize the limits of their work. It will not preclude extreme fires. The right combination of hot days and drought —well, that’s when megafires happen.

Jerry Fedrizzi and his wife, Jan, have taken the onus of personal responsibility to heart. They grew up in Glenwood Springs, have lived in Eagle since 1968, but have a cabin at about 8,300-foot elevation above Glenwood Springs. The days of 30 below in Eagle have become distant memories, he said on a hot June day while describing his continued work to remove vegetation from around their cabin. A fire official who studied their work gave them a 90% favorable rating, he reported proudly.

The temperature in Eagle was predicted to hit 97 degrees the next day, an unprecedented mark, and the wind was “just awful,” he said.
Not one prone to despair, Fedrizzi was nonetheless troubled. “It’s grim,” he said, “and I don’t know what will happen in the next 10 to 20 years.”

A slightly different version of this story was published in The Aspen Times Weekly. Also in the e-journal were these stories:

6 of 8 hottest years in Colorado since 2012

Six of the eight warmest years in Colorado’s historical record have occurred since 2012.

“What we would have thought as a warm summer 75 years ago is now considered a cool summer in Colorado,” said Russ Schumacher, the Colorado state climatologist, on a webinar sponsored by the AAAS Colorado Local Science Engagement Network.

That temperature increase has quite a bit of impact on water volume, he said.
And warming will continue.

“We have high confidence that (warming) will continue if greenhouse gas emissions continue that course that we are on.” It’s just a question of how much,” he added.

Laurna Kaatz, the climate scientist at Denver Water, made the same point. She described the East Troublesome Fire as having “all the hallmarks of climate change.”

Will forests come back as before?

We have more higher temperatures and more wildfires. What will this mean in the future?

At least in the foothills along the southern Front Range, that’s likely to result in fewer trees. A 2020 University of Colorado Boulder-led study of 22 burned areas dominated by Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir found that they failed to bounce back as compared to regions burned 100 years prior.

“This study and others clearly show that resilience of our forests to fire has declined significantly under warmer, drier conditions,” said Thomas Veblen, now a professor emeritus of forest ecology and a study co-author.

Conclusions of that study do not directly apply to higher-elevation forests such as those found in around Aspen, Vail, and Steamboat Springs—except in this regard: “We can expect to have an increase in fire continue for the foreseeable future,” Veblen said.

Red flags early & often

Five red flag warning days had been issued by the National Weather Service in Routt County, reported the Steamboat Pilot in its June 22 issue, compared to 9 in all of 2020.

To the west in Moffat County, 18 red-flag warnings had been issued compared to 25 all of last year.

The Pilot explained that red flag warnings are based on metrics that include humidity, wind, how long conditions are forecast to last and how dry some of the fuels, like grasses, are in an area. When issued, the warnings mean conditions make fires more likely to start and spread.

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.

US Drought Monitor map July 13, 2021.

West Drought Monitor map July 13, 2021.

High Plains Drought Monitor map July 13, 2021.

Colorado Drought Monitor map July 13, 2021.

Click here to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

The U.S. experienced the extremes this week, with expansion of drought in the West, a robust Southwest Monsoon in the Southwest, a tropical storm making landfall in the Southeast, and extreme flooding in southeastern Texas. In the West, mid-level ridging has resulted in much above-normal temperatures for the western third of the CONUS, exacerbating drought conditions in the Pacific Northwest, northern Great Basin, Northern Rockies, and along the Front Range. Above-normal temperatures also pushed into the northern High Plains, warranting further deterioration of drought conditions in locations where rainfall remained below-average for the week. The central and eastern Corn Belt was a battle ground of sorts, with some locations seeing improvement with this week’s heavy rainfall, while other locations missed out, warranting some degradation due to antecedent dryness. New Mexico and West Texas saw targeted reductions in drought coverage due to heavy precipitation associated with the robust Southwest Monsoon. In the eastern U.S., Tropical Storm Elsa made landfall and moved up the East Coast leaving in its wake a large swath of more than 2 inches of rainfall, with several locations receiving 5 to 10 inches of rainfall. The extra-tropical transition of Elsa warranted moderate drought (D1) removal along the Virginia/North Carolina border with 1-category improvements elsewhere along Elsa’s path up the East Coast. Frontal activity prior to Elsa’s passage warranted improvements to interior areas of the Northeast. Fire risk remains high across the West…

High Plains

The western half of the High Plains Region experienced above-normal average temperatures this week underneath a mid-level ridge, while the eastern half experienced below-normal average temperatures, associated with increased cloud-cover and heavy rainfall for several locations. Improvements were mainly designated to the Middle Missouri River basin, encompassing parts of eastern South Dakota and northeastern Nebraska, which received more than 2 inches of rainfall (more than 1 inch above-normal for the week). Elsewhere in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, below-normal precipitation coupled with antecedent dryness warranted several 1-category deteriorations. In the western half of the High Plains Region, deteriorations were more a function of above-normal temperatures helping to exacerbate ongoing drought conditions in the Eastern Rockies and along the Front Range. Furthermore, this region is void of snowpack due to the below-normal rainy season in the West leading up to this period of above-normal temperatures since Spring, which has caused further depletion of soil moisture, stream flows, and ground water in many locations…

West

Extreme, record-breaking heat leading up to this week has resulted in rapid deteriorations in drought conditions across the Pacific Northwest, northern Great Basin, and Northern Rockies. Although the largest positive temperature anomalies shifted southward into the Desert Southwest and Four Corners Region this week, above-normal temperatures persisted across in the northwestern CONUS, resulting in continued degradations of drought conditions from the Pacific Northwest eastward to central Montana. A small area of improvement was warranted in northeastern Montana, where 1 to 2 inches of rainfall resulted in modest improvements to soil moisture and short-term SPIs. Farther southward in New Mexico, the robust Southwest Monsoon has resulted in drastic improvements in recent weeks. This week is more of the same, with several 1-category improvement across central and eastern portions of the state. In some cases, moisture has seeped several feet into the soils, at least down to 200 cm (per NASA SPoRT and ground reports). Improved shallow ground water conditions also support the improved depiction this week. However, fire concerns remain across the West as a whole, as there have been nearly 40 new wildfires reported since July 10 (89 as of July 14)…

South

A localized area of low pressure brought severe flooding to much of southeastern Texas, with many locations in and around the Houston metro area receiving 10 to 15 inches of rainfall. Some of the precipitation associated with this system made it farther westward, resulting in 1-category improvements (D0 and D1) along the Rio Grande. Western Texas, and extending into New Mexico, is experiencing improved ground conditions with this week’s rainfall, but also with antecedent conditions related to the early onset and robustness of the Southwest Monsoon, warranting 1-category improvements in the Trans-Pecos region and western parts of the Panhandle. Farther east in the Tennessee Valley, D0 coverage was reduced for many locations receiving 2 inches or more of rainfall. However, where the heavier amounts were not observed, short-term deficits continue to mount, with parts of northeastern Tennessee experiencing an expansion of abnormally dry (D0) conditions, with a small area deteriorating to moderate drought (D1) conditions, where 90-day deficits have increased to around 6 inches…

Looking Ahead

During the next 5 days (July 15 to 19), the West Coast, much of the Great Basin, and the Northern Rockies are favored to remain dry. Conversely, precipitation associated with the Southwest Monsoon is expected to continue across the Four Corners Region. In the eastern half of the U.S., a frontal boundary extending from the Central Plains to the Great Lakes is expected to move southward toward the Gulf Coast, bringing with it the potential for many areas from the Central Plains and Mississippi Valley to the East Coast to receive more than an inch of rainfall, with the highest amounts (2 inches or greater) extending from the Central Plains to the eastern Great Lakes. Maximum temperature anomalies are expected to increase across the Northern Tier (10°F to 15°F positive anomalies), while the southern half of the CONUS will experience seasonal to below-normal temperatures (less than 10°F negative anomalies).

The CPC 6-10 day extended range outlook (valid July 20 to 25) favors enhanced odds for above-normal temperatures across much of the West and Northern Tier eastward to the Great Lakes, underneath anomalous mid-level ridging. Enhanced odds for below-normal temperatures are favored across much of the Southern Tier of the CONUS and into the Northeast, associated with a weakness in the ridge in the west-central CONUS and troughing in the East. Below-normal precipitation across the Northern Tier is associated with the anomalous ridge over the western-central CONUS, with below-normal precipitation probabilities extending to the Northeast. An enhanced Southwest Monsoon favors increased precipitation chances in the Southwest and large portions of the Great Basin. Above-normal precipitation probabilities along the Gulf Coast and westward into Texas are associated with a mean frontal boundary. In Alaska, mid-level troughing over the Bering Strait increases odds for below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation across the Southwest and West Mainland, respectively, and eastern Aleutians. The eastern Alaska Mainland and Panhandle favor above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation, respectively, underneath a mean ridge.

Click here to read the summary. Here’s an excerpt:

Click here to read the discussion:

ENSO Alert System Status: La Niña Watch

Synopsis: ENSO-neutral is favored through the Northern Hemisphere summer and into the fall (51% chance for the August-October season), with La Niña potentially emerging during the September-November season and lasting through the 2021-22 winter (66% chance during November-January).

Near-average sea surface temperatures, consistent with ENSO-neutral conditions, were observed across most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean during June. In the last week, most Niño indices were near zero except for the Niño-1+2 index, which was +0.3oC. Subsurface temperature anomalies were slightly positive (averaged from 180-100oW) and remained steady during the month. However, in parts of the eastern Pacific, below-average subsurface temperature anomalies returned near the thermocline. For the month, the low-level and upper-level winds were near average across most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Tropical convection was suppressed near the Date Line, while remaining mostly near average elsewhere. Overall, the ocean and atmosphere system reflected ENSO-neutral conditions.

A majority of the models in the IRI/CPC plume predict ENSO-neutral to continue through the fall and winter 2021-22. However, the latest forecast model runs from the NCEPCFSv2, many of the models from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble, and some models from our international partners indicate the onset of La Niña during the Northern Hemisphere fall, continuing into winter 2021- 22. The forecaster consensus favors the semodel ensembles, while also noting the historical tendency for a second winter of La Niña to follow the first. In summary, ENSO-neutral is favored through the Northern Hemisphere summer and into the fall (51% chance for the August-October season), with La Niña potentially emerging during the September-November season and lasting through the 2021-22 winter (66% chance during November-January; click CPC/IRI consensus forecast for the chances in each 3-month period).

From The Denver Post (Andy Stein):

Denver used to average about five days of 95-degree heat prior to the 1970s; now it’s more than 20 days

At its core, climate change is simply a change in the usual weather that a location experiences over time — the 80218 zip code in Denver, the state of Colorado, the contiguous United States or the entire planet. Thanks to modern technologies and weather tracking systems, scientists are able to visualize the changes in our weather and climate on every scale.

There are numerous reasons for that climate change (NASA’s Climate Change page is a great resource), spanning from the Earth’s distance from the sun to humans burning coal, oil and gas, the gases from which “cause the air to heat up.”

A large chunk of the United States has seen a warming trend in annual temperature (comparing the climate normals from this decade to decades past), most notably in the Western U.S., areas around the Great Lakes, the Northeast and Florida — so, almost everywhere…

Summer warming

The U.S. meteorological summer season, which runs from June 1-Aug. 31, has warmed by at least 2.0 degrees since 1970, according to Climate Central, an independent organization that surveys and conducts scientific research on climate change.

In Denver and Colorado Springs, the summer season has warmed by 2.6 degrees since 1970 — higher than the national average. Grand Junction’s average summer temperature is up by 1 degree, smaller but still notable.

Higher average temperatures increase the number of extreme heat days. Denver used to average about five days of 95-degree heat prior to the 1970s; now it’s more than 20 days. Colorado Springs used to experience 11 days of 90-degree heat in 1970, now the city feels 30 days of intense heat per season. Grand Junction saw an average of four days of 100-degree heat in 1970 and now that number has increased to nine days.

On average, Grand Junction experiences higher temperatures throughout the year because it’s a dry, arid desert climate, so temperature and precipitation extremes are more difficult to reach.

But as we’ve seen as of late, temperatures have had no trouble reaching dangerous levels several times this year already (don’t forget the record-shattering heat wave we experienced before the peak summer heat even set in)…

Summer nights are typically where Colorado cities balance out the daily temperature average due to the fact that they cool off efficiently in normally dry air. But data is showing that even our nighttime temperatures are rising.

In Denver, the average nighttime temperature has risen by 1.8 degrees since 1970; it’s 1.7 degrees warmer in Colorado Springs and 0.3 degrees warmer at night in Grand Junction on average.