the Colorado fires... and strange weather

 One reader of my other blog commented on our local weather weirdness and incredible wildfires, and because they are NOT normal and they ARE unprecidented, I thought I'd share a little of the strangeness with you all...

 This is the bathroom sink in my workshop.  I just cleaned it recently, but hey - it is a shop I work in every day.  Anyhow: you see that black stuff?  The sink was clean when I went to bed last night.  That black stuff is ash and soot from the Pine Gulch Fire, which is about one hundred miles away (I live in the center of the city) and it blew in the window overnight, in about six hours.

 But this is nothing.  Two days ago, the Cameron Peak Fire exploded into a "pyro-cumulous cloud", a vast updraft of not just hot air and smoke but ashes, soot, burning materials like pine needles, and actual flames, which carried fire and burning crap as high as 35,000 feet that day. (high enough to reach a cruising jetliner - pilots beware!) The cloud rained burning pine needles, soot, and ash down on the city of Fort Collins, 70 miles away to the east.

Here's a pyro-cumulous cloud formed by the Pine Gulch fire on August 25:

 Large fires like these literally create their own weather, the tremendous updrafts creating huge base winds, which then make the fire burn even faster and hotter.

 The sky is overcast with smoke this morning, which filters out all of the shorter (bluish) wavelengths the sunlight at high altitude, giving everything a strange pinkish-orange glow as if the sun had been turned into a high pressure sodium street lamp.  It's the sort of color which would not startle you if seen at sunrise or sunset, but this is happening at noon - at all hours - every day for a week now.

 (the air quality is listed as "Unhealthy For Everyone" right now, and has been for weeks, off and on)

 I live in Denver, which is on the plains just barely east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which essentially start at Golden and Boulder, about 40 miles to the west.

 The mountains are where our worst wildfires happen, and since before Colorado was a state, there have been cities, towns, and small communities dotted all over those mountains.  Some of those communities are occasionally incinerated by fires (which may be natural or man-made in origin) so fire mitigation - and fire dangers and rules - are usually taken quite seriously by the locals.  The tourists... not so much.

 And you know, sometimes people do weird(1) shit(2) that just makes you shake your head.

 However, the record-breaking Pine Gulch Fire was started by lightning on July 31, and it has so far burned 139,000 acres.  While it is now "87% contained", which sounds lovely, that changes dramatically from day to day as conditions change, and frankly, it has taken 400 personnel five weeks of amazing effort to slowly creep up on that number.

 Meanwhile, the Cameron Peaks fire has exploded from 30,000 acres to 60,000 acres in a week, and it's only 4% contained. They've been fighting it since the first weak in August.

 Surprisingly, the very strange weather we're about to experience will probably make the fires worse, because they bring high winds, yet the lower temperature of the air (wind!) has almost no effect on fires by itself.  The precipitation - as snow - is not expected to be enough to significantly dampen currently dry fuels, therefore it is not expected to assist fire fight efforts at all.

 And now, the weather.  Forecast for tonight: dark!

 Oh and also, the predicted high for my location today is 94ºF / 34ºC and sunny (well smoky and sunny), and the predicted low tonight is 34ºF / 1ºC, with freezing temperatures all day tomorrow, with snow. Yup: a thirty degree temperature drop in twelve to fourteen hours.

 Buckle up kids: your kids will have to deal with much weirder and tougher weather than this!