Upgrading infrastructure could reduce future flood damage

A press release from the University of Colorado: The severe flooding that devastated a wide swath of Colorado last year might have been less destructive if the bridges, roads and other infrastructure had been upgraded or modernized, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Denver.

“People need to understand the importance and seriousness of infrastructure,” said Jimmy Kim, PhD, associate professor of structural engineering at the CU Denver College of Engineering and Applied Science and lead author the study. “There is an assumption that a bridge will stand forever and that’s simply not true.”

Kim along with co-authors Wesley Marshall, PhD, PE and Indrani Pal, PhD, both assistant professors of civil engineering at CU Denver, the leading public research college in Denver, examined the causes of the flooding and its impact on infrastructure.

...The rain began on Sept. 9, 2013 and didn’t stop until the 16th. In just days, places like Boulder County received three-quarters of its yearly precipitation. Bridges collapsed, roads failed and homes were swept away. According to the study, 120 bridges now need structural repair. Many were damaged by rushing water which washed out backfill soil and exposed bridge foundations.

Kim said new `scour control’ methods, aimed at reducing these washouts, should be developed to help bridges withstand future flooding. “You can do that by upgrading existing piers (columns) supporting the bridge or changing current design approaches” he said. “The Colorado Department of Transportation is currently working on improving scour design for bridge structures.”

...In Colorado, the report card says, 70 percent of major roads are poor or mediocre and 566 bridges are structurally deficient. “Reconstruction is very expensive and should be the last resort,” Kim said. “But we can repair or strengthen existing systems less expensively. We are looking at a growing national problem, one that will only get worse if we ignore it.”...

Colorado National Guard in the 2013 floods, US Department of Defense photo

Search for three missing called off in Colorado muslide

Environment News Service: Colorado emergency authorities have called off a search for three men missing after an enormous mudslide in a remote part of western Colorado. Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey said Tuesday that another slide could come down the mountainside, which is too unstable to continue the search.

A unified incident command was established Sunday between Plateau Valley Fire Department, Mesa County Road and Bridge, and the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, to handle the large mudslide incident and search for the three missing men.

The first reports of the mudslide came into the Grand Junction Regional Communication Center about 6:15 pm on Saturday, along with reports of three local Collbran/Mesa area ranchers missing.

Plateau Valley Fire Department first responded to the area of Salt Creek Road, in the area of Vega Reservoir, on the Grand Mesa. This area is east and south of the small town of Collbran, about 11 miles, located in Mesa County.

The mudslide is estimated to be about four miles long, two miles wide and about 250 feet deep, in many places. It is described as very unstable by deputies on scene, and they estimate an entire ridge has been sliding for most of Sunday...

Researchers evaluate best weather forecasting models wit one 2013 storm

University of Iowa's Iowa Now: Two University of Iowa researchers recently tested the ability of the world’s most advanced weather forecasting models to predict the Sept. 9-16, 2013 extreme rainfall that caused severe flooding in Boulder, Colo. The results, published in the December 2013 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, indicated the forecasting models generally performed well, but also left room for improvement.

David Lavers and Gabriele Villarini, researchers at IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering, a world-renowned UI research facility, evaluated rainfall forecasts from eight different global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.

...After the storms had subsided, Lavers and Villarini decided to examine how well some of the leading NWP models had done. As a constantly improving science, NWP involves integrating current weather conditions through mathematical models of the atmosphere-ocean system to forecast future weather. For their study, the researchers selected the actual rainfall forecasts made by eight state-of-the-art global NWP models for the period of the Colorado floods.

“At an early lead time to the event, the rainfall forecasts failed to capture the persistent nature of the event’s rainfall,” says Lavers, corresponding author and an IIHR postdoctoral researcher. “However, the rainfall forecasts from Sept. 9 (the first day of the event) did provide guidance indicating a significant period of rainfall in Colorado.”

“Overall, these models tended to underestimate rainfall amounts and placed the rainfall in the wrong area, even though they provided an indication that a period of heavy rainfall was going to affect parts of Colorado,” says Gabriele Villarini, study co-author, assistant professor in the UI College of Engineering Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and assistant research engineer at IIHR.

...Says Lavers: “It is hoped that the continuing development of finer resolution NWP models that resolve the complex atmospheric motions in mountainous terrain, such as the Rocky Mountains, will make it possible to improve the forecasting capabilities of such extreme rainfall events.”...

FEMA image of the aftermath of 2013 flooding in Jamestown, Colorado

Permanent flood fixes in Colorado could take years

Monte Whaley in the Denver Post: A Dec. 1 deadline to reopen 27 flood-battered Colorado highways was tame compared with the years of complex challenges facing road crews charged with making permanent fixes to damage caused by September's historic floods.

The magnitude of the task is still being assessed while highway managers consider the types of technological and engineering changes they need to make to keep 485 miles of damaged roadway less vulnerable to mass flooding.

It may take the Colorado Department of Transportation as long as 48 months to finish the permanent repairs needed on formerly flooded roads, said Johnny Olson, CDOT's incident commander for the state's infrastructure recovery force.

"We were charged with getting residents reconnected with their communities by getting these roadways done, and done to ensure safety by Dec. 1, and we did that," said Olson. "Now we have to go back and evaluate and make repairs based on the long term."

By Dec. 31, CDOT should have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done. By next spring, work could start on permanent "early out" projects where there was relatively minor damage to roadways. But on larger sections of highway — including U.S. 34 in Big Thompson Canyon — evaluations will take much longer and the work will be more detailed and challenging, Olson said....

Arapahoe at 1st street in Boulder, Colorado on September 13th, 2013. Flood brought debris onto the road and caused serious damage. Shot by AlmanacManiac, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Colorado floods: A month later, mountain towns 'spooky' and deserted

Tony Dokoupil in NBC News: Flanked by a boom mic and an American flag, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper praised his state for rebounding after last month’s historic flood. “You can’t help but be inspired,” he told the Loveland Chamber of Commerce this week, celebrating a “spirit of recovery” that has opened most roads and emptied every temporary shelter.

But while the bigger cities of central Colorado — from Boulder to Loveland to Fort Collins — are bustling again, at least two once-gleaming villages in the foothills are virtual ghost towns, isolated by gaps in the asphalt and rivers that undid a century of civilization in a week of heavy rain. In Glen Haven, a 400-person jewel box on the road to Rocky Mountain National Park, an estimated 80 percent of the homes are empty and every business downtown is closed or totally gone — swept seven miles into the town of Drake, a thousand-person tourist draw that’s also now obliterated and empty except for a handful of holdouts who refused to be evacuated. 

“We saw the whole town kind of explode,” said Bob Smallwood, Glen Haven’s assistant fire chief, and one of ten people left in a 200-home neighborhood called The Retreat.

The water that cascaded out of the Rockies last month ripped through 24 counties, killing nine people and dampening 2,500 square miles in the heart of Colorado. But the communities of Glen Haven and Drake may be the most devastated, deserted areas left — as well as the most at risk of becoming genuine ghost towns before the “spirit of recovery” finds them too.

A month after the flood a Ford Bronco and other debris remain piled against the Town Hall, which slid 20 feet off its foundation into the Glen Haven General Store. Six of the seven buildings downtown have been totaled. “There’s been a lot of talk and a lot of meetings but not much action,” said Steve Childs, owner of the Glen Haven General Store, which was knocked sideways in the flood by a Ford Bronco and the remnants of Town Hall...

Jamestown, Colorado, on September 15 after the 2013 floods, FEMA photo

Massive spruce beetle outbreak in Colorado tied to drought

University of Colorado at Boulder: A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates drought high in the northern Colorado mountains is the primary trigger of a massive spruce beetle outbreak that is tied to long-term changes in sea-surface temperatures from the Northern Atlantic Ocean, a trend that is expected to continue for decades.

The new study is important because it shows that drought is a better predictor of spruce beetle outbreaks in northern Colorado than temperature alone, said lead study author Sarah Hart, a CU-Boulder doctoral student in geography. Drought conditions appear to decrease host tree defenses against spruce beetles, which attack the inner layers of bark, feeding and breeding in the phloem, a soft inner bark tissue, which impedes tree growth and eventually kills vast swaths of forest.

Spruce beetles, like their close relatives, mountain pine beetles, are attacking large areas of coniferous forests across the West. While the mountain pine beetle outbreak in the Southern Rocky Mountains is the best known and appears to be the worst in the historical record, the lesser known spruce beetle infestation has the potential to be equally or even more devastating in Colorado, said Hart, lead author on the new study.

 “It was interesting that drought was a better predictor for spruce beetle outbreaks than temperature,” said Hart of the geography department.  “The study suggests that spruce beetle outbreaks occur when warm and dry conditions cause stress in the host trees.”

...The new study also puts to rest false claims that fire suppression in the West is the trigger for spruce beetle outbreaks, said Veblen.

...The strongest climate correlation to spruce beetle outbreaks was above average annual values for the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, or AMO, a long-term phenomenon that changes sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. Believed to shift from cool to warm phases roughly every 60 years, positive AMO conditions are linked to warmer and drier conditions over much of North America, including the West....

Wolf Creek Pass ski area in Colorado, shot by Doc Searls, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

After the floods in Colorado, a deluge of worry about leaking oil

Jack Healy in the New York Times: When floodwaters surged into Colorado’s drilling center, they swamped wells, broke pipes and swept huge oil tanks off their foundations. The state has counted a dozen “notable” spills stemming from the catastrophic floods this month.

 Now, as the waters drain east and regulators move to assess the environmental toll, the sight of drowning oil wells has inflamed the emotional debate over the West’s new resource rush. It is a familiar argument here in a state where oil wells dot farmers’ fields and ragged peaks still bear the scars of century-old gold and silver mines.

 There are about 20,000 oil and gas wells across Weld County, and about 1,900 of them had to be closed off — “shut in” in industry parlance — as the floodwaters coursed down from the mountains and spread out across the plains, inundating entire communities.

 Images of toppled oil tanks and dark sheens on the water created impressions of an environmental calamity, but state officials say the damage appears to be limited. About 37,380 gallons have spilled so far — an amount, energy officials point out, that would fill up about five percent of an Olympic-size swimming pool...

Sandbags for the Colorado flood, with the Colorado National Guard helping. Photo by Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Nicole Manzanares, public domain

Climate-change analysts keep eye on Colorado flood insurance

Shelby Kinney in Denver I-Journal via the Colorado Independent: About a month before the floodwaters tore through town, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its “State of the Climate” report. The authors highlighted 2012 as the hottest year on record in the United States. Next week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its colossal report. Consensus is that we’re in for more heat. Whether that will translate to more frequent “biblical” droughts, fires and floods in Colorado is less certain.

“There’s really almost no question that the world will get warmer,” said Scott Denning, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “My expert opinion is that maybe [more extreme rainfall] will come more often and maybe it won’t… I just don’t know.”

Last week’s rainfall was a “conspiracy” of many factors, Denning said, which lead to an extremely hard-to-predict event. He said it’s difficult to tie climate change to specific disasters in the kind of direct way the public would like to see. Notable links can be more general.

Soil over the nearly 2,000 square miles of parched rangeland, forests and mountains affected by the floods, for example, had been wrung of its precipitation by increasingly hot temperatures and charred by one wildfire after another. Water is absorbed less efficiently in such conditions, so the conspiracy of rainfall that bounced over the scarred and parched lands had no place to go except into creeks and roadways and so transformed them into rushing rivers.

...“We’ve had so many tragic wake up calls in Colorado that you do need to be financially prepared for disaster. We do have that window now, where people are thinking about the unthinkable.”...

Arapahoe at 1st Street in Boulder, Colorado, on September 13th, 2013. Flood brought debris onto the road and caused serious damage. Shot by AlmanacManiac, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Colorado rescue effort biggest in USA since Katrina in 2005

Rick Jervis in USA Today: The massive search-and-rescue effort after the recent floods in Colorado has been one of the biggest in state history -- and the largest in the USA since Katrina -- as thousands of stranded people are plucked from swirling floodwaters by helicopters or rumbled out of washed-out neighborhoods by all-terrain military vehicles.

TV and camera-phone images of people hoisted by helicopter from flooded homes have brought eerie comparisons with similar efforts to rescue stranded Gulf Coast residents during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The rescues in Colorado were only a fraction of the number in the Gulf -- 3,101 Coloradoans as of Thursday, compared with 60,000 rescued from rooftops and flooded homes in Katrina's aftermath -- but the event still tested Colorado's emergency-response system and brought together the assets of several agencies in challenging terrain.

Unlike the Katrina rescue effort, where critics later pointed to a breakdown in communication among local, state and federal agencies, various rescue teams in Colorado -- from Colorado National Guardsmen to U.S. Forest Service Hotshot Crews -- worked quickly and, by most accounts, effectively together in one of the largest rescue missions in Colorado history, says 1st Lt. Skye Robinson, a Colorado National Guard spokesman.

Six people have been confirmed dead since the floods began Sept. 11, and 140 are still unaccounted for, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"The assets needed arrived and were prepared and went out to mission," Robinson says. "The process went very smoothly. This is how things should work."...

Jamestown, Colorado on September 15, 2013 -- Nebraska Task Force 1 (NE-TF1) conducts search and rescue operation in a damaged building in Jamestown, Colorado following flooding in 2013. Photo by Michael Rieger/FEMA

Colorado flooding triggers oil spills, shutdowns

CBS News: Colorado's flooding shut down hundreds of natural gas and oil wells in the state's main petroleum-producing region and triggered at least two spills, temporarily suspending a multibillion-dollar drilling frenzy and sending inspectors into the field to gauge the extent of pollution.

Besides the possible environmental impact, flood damage to roads, railroads and other infrastructure will affect the region's energy production for months to come. And analysts warn that images of flooded wellheads from the booming Wattenberg Field will increase public pressure to impose restrictions on drilling techniques such as fracking.

"There's been massive amounts of growth in the last two years and it's certainly expected to continue," Caitlyn McCrimmon, a senior research associate for Calgary-based energy consultant ITG Investment Research, said of Colorado oil and gas drilling. "The only real impediment to growth in this area would be if this gives enough ammunition to environmentalists to rally support for fracking bans, which they had started working on before this."

Two spills were reported by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. — 323 barrels (13,500 gallon) along the St. Vrain River near Platteville, and 125 barrels (5,250 gallons) into the South Platte River near Milliken, federal and state regulators said. The St. Vrain feeds into the South Platte, which flows across Colorado's plains and into Nebraska. In both cases, the oil apparently was swept away by floodwaters. Both releases involved condensate, a mixture of oil and water, said Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Matthew Allen.

The environmental damage still was being assessed, but officials in Weld County, where the spills took place, said the oil was just one among a host of contaminants caught up in floodwaters washing through communities along the Rocky Mountain foothills....

An urban search and rescue dog in Colorado, September 16, 2013. Shot by Michael Rieger of FEMA

Property losses from Colorado flood projected at about $2 billion

Keith Coffman in Reuters: Property losses from deadly flooding in Colorado will total nearly $2 billion, about half from housing and half from the commercial and government sectors, catastrophe modeling firm Eqecat said on Wednesday in the first comprehensive estimate of the disaster's economic toll.

State and county emergency management officials have hardly begun to prepare actual damage assessments from flooding that has ravaged thousands of homes and killed at least eight people in a disaster zone in and around Colorado's biggest urban centers.

The projected losses for residential property alone are about $900 million - equivalent to more than $200 for each of the 4 million people who live in Colorado's 17 flood-stricken counties, based on 2012 census data. Most of the overall losses are uninsured, the firm said.

The tally for residential losses includes damaged or destroyed housing, as well as lost furnishings and belongings and costs incurred by displaced residents to live elsewhere until their dwellings are repaired or replaced, Eqecat said.

Another $1 billion is attributed to losses projected for commercial and government property, including roads and bridges, Eqecat senior vice president Tom Larsen told Reuters....

Jamestown, Colo., Sep. 15, 2013 -- The small mountain town of 300 has been cut off because of Boulder County flood. FEMA Urban Search & Rescue (US&R) teams deployed to the state to help in Search and Rescue operations. FEMA photo

Colorado flood: New numbers released for unaccounted-for people

Kieran Nicholson in the Denver Post: The number of people unaccounted for in the Colorado floods was downgraded Tuesday morning to 648, according to the Colorado Office of Emergency Management. The number reflects totals statewide. Officials have repeatedly explained that their count does not mean all of those people are thought to be missing; many people simply are physically unable to let friends and loved ones know they are OK.

The floods that started Sept. 11 have so far claimed eight lives, the state said: three in Boulder County, two in El Paso County, two in Larimer County, and one to be announced. Early morning fog has given way to blue skies in northeastern Colorado, but flood warnings continue for several areas on the eastern plains and in the foothills, continues Tuesday.

...Meanwhile, in the foothills of Boulder and Larimer counties, helicopter evacuations continue Tuesday for people who have been stranded behind washed-out roads. "We still have air operations Tuesday," Trost said. "We also have FEMA search and rescue teams hiking through the canyons, as well," looking for anyone who made need help.

At 2:30 a.m. the South Platte near Balzac was staging at 11.3 feet, more than a foot above flood stage in the area, the weather service reports. The river should continue to stage at about 11 feet in the area through Wednesday morning....

County map of Colorado highlighting 14 counties declared disaster emergencies on September 13, 2013 by governor in 2013 Colorado flooding: Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Boulder, Denver, El Paso, Fremont, Jefferson, Larimer, Logan, Morgan, Pueblo, Washington and Weld. Map by Augiasstallputzer, who released it into the public domain

19,000 homes damaged or destroyed in Colorado flooding, 5 dead

Anthony Castellano in ABC News: More than 1,000 residents are stranded in the wake of ferocious flooding and relentless rain that have killed at least five people and left 19,000 homes in Colorado either damaged or destroyed, according to officials.

A total of 1,253 people are also unaccounted for but officials cautioned the number is subject to change as widespread flood recovery efforts continue. The Colorado Office of Emergency management reports that five people, four in Boulder and one in El Paso County, are dead.

Nick Christensen of the Larimer County Sheriff's Office says that with so many missing, the number of dead will likely rise. "It's just going to take some time to determine the status of everybody," he said.

A National Guard helicopter carrying civilians out of Lyons, Colo., was grounded by heavy rains and flood waters Sunday. The crew has been forced to wait it out and spend the night on higher ground, according to a National Guard news release. It's just another problem in a continuous stream of misfortune for so many in the flood zone.

As many as 1,000 people in Larimer County were awaiting rescue Sunday, but airlifts were grounded because of the rain, Type 2 Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team commander Shane Del Grosso said, according to The Associated Press. The stranded are without power and are thought to be low on food. Del Grasso says they need a break in the weather to continue rescue efforts.

"We need a change in the weather pattern to get a break and to really go after what needs to be done out there," Del Grosso told ABC News Radio....

A panorama of Boulder, Colorado on a drier day, shot by Hustvedt, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Fatal flooding in Colorado worsens; entire town evacuated

Chicago Tribune: Authorities have ordered all residents of the town of Lyons, located north of Boulder, to leave this morning as deadly flooding worsened overnight as record rains continued in central Colorado. The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said officials planned to evacuate the town of about 2,000 around daybreak, according to KDVR in Denver. The Colorado National Guard has been called into to help.

The flooding has killed at least three people already, toppling buildings and stranding drivers, worsened overnight as record rains pounded the state, forcing thousands more residents to flee to higher ground, officials said.

The unusual late-summer downpours drenched Colorado's biggest urban centers, stretching 130 miles along the eastern slopes of the Rockies from Fort Collins near the Wyoming border south through Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs.

In Boulder, the rainfall record for September set in 1940 was shattered, officials said, unleashing surging floodwaters in Boulder Canyon above the city that triggered the evacuation of some 4,000 residents late on Thursday.

"There's so much water coming out of the canyon, it has to go somewhere, and unfortunately it's coming into the city," said Ashlee Herring, spokeswoman for the Boulder office of Emergency Management....

A lower level at Boulder Creek, shot by Susan, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flash floods kill at least 3 in Colorado

Trevor Hughes, Robert Garrison and Gary Strauss in USA Today: A Rocky Mountain storm system that dumped up to 10 inches over central Colorado has killed at least three people. Several cities and towns along Colorado's Front Range were bracing for more rain and flooding.

KUSA-TV reports one person was killed in the collapse of a home in Nederland, a mountain community about 20 miles north of Boulder, while Colorado Springs police said they found a second victim while patrolling west of the city. A third victim was recovered from a north Boulder home Thursday morning, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said.

Rain began early in the morning on Wednesday and continued throughout the day, becoming especially heavy in the evening, AccuWeather meteorologist Courtney Spamer says. Rain fell at nearly two inches pwer hour Wednesday evening and early Thursday, according to the Weather Channel. Boulder has picked up more than six inches of rain so far.

The University of Colorado Boulder campus was closed Thursday after a torrent of water from Boulder Creek flooding buildings. Officials also closed Boulder Valley and St. Vrain district schools. Residents of Fourmile Canyon near Boulder and Coal Creek Canyon, northwest of Denver, were under mandatory evacuation orders.

"I think we have a continually dangerous situation,'' said Pelle, who urged Boulder residents to stay home. "It's not a good day to travel. It's not a good day to risk your loved one's lives. It's a good day to hunker down."...

Boulder, Colorado, at twilight, shot by Phil Armitage, public domain

Clearing up confusion on future of Colorado River flows

Science Daily: The Colorado River provides water for more than 30 million people, including those in the fast-growing cities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Increasing demand for that water combined with reduced flow and the looming threat of climate change have prompted concern about how to manage the basin's water in coming decades.

In the past five years, scientific studies estimated declines of future flows ranging from 6 percent to 45 percent by 2050. A paper by University of Washington researchers and co-authors at eight institutions across the West aims to explain this wide range, and provide policymakers and the public with a framework for comparison. The study is published this week in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. "The different estimates have led to a lot of frustration," said lead author Julie Vano, who recently earned a UW doctorate in civil and environmental engineering. "This paper puts all the studies in a single framework and identifies how they are connected."

Besides analyzing the uncertainty, the authors establish what is known about the river's future. Warmer temperatures will lead to more evaporation and thus less flow. Changes to precipitation are less certain, since the headwaters are at the northern edge of a band of projected drying, but climate change will likely decrease the rain and snow that drains into the Colorado basin.

It also turns out that the early 20th century, which is the basis for water allocation in the basin, was a period of unusually high flow. The tree ring record suggests that the Colorado has experienced severe droughts in the past and will do so again, even without any human-caused climate change. "The Colorado River is kind of ground zero for drying in the southwestern U.S.," said co-author Dennis Lettenmaier, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering. "We hope this paper sheds some light on how to interpret results from the new generation of climate models, and why there's an expectation that there will be a range of values, even when analyzing output from the same models."...

The bend downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona. Shot by Christian Mehlführer, Chmehl, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Crews work to save Colo. town as wildfire grows

USA Today via AP: Fanned by another afternoon of high winds, the erratic wildfire threatening tourist areas of the southwestern Colorado mountains grew to 100 square miles on Saturday, and fire officials said they saw little hope for a break before Tuesday.

Still, they remained optimistic of saving the popular summer retreat of South Fork, and some 600 firefighters spent another day trying to keep the flames from moving in on the Wolf Creek Ski area and the historic mining town of Creede.

"I like our chances," fire operations chief Russ Long said when asked about the chances of protecting South Fork from one of three blazes in the so-called West Fork fire complex that were sparked last week by lighting in forests turned tinder by lingering drought and beetle infestations that have killed thousands of acres of spruce trees.

But he emphasized that firefighters were strictly in defensive mode, with no containment of the fire. The blaze's rapid advance on Friday prompted the evacuation of hundreds of summer visitors and the town's 400 permanent residents, and it could be days before people are allowed back into their homes, cabins and RV parks, fire crew officials said. South Fork Mayor Kenneth Brooke estimated that 1,000 to 1,500 people were forced to flee.

The fire's movement toward South Fork had slowed overnight Friday when winds dropped and the flames moved into a more healthy section of forest. But 30- to 40- mph winds returned Saturday afternoon, grounding aircraft and spreading the fast-moving flames to the north....

The outskirts of South Fork, Colorado, shot by Pmsyyz, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Rain dampens Colorado’s worst-ever wildfire

Environment News Service: A welcome rain [Friday] afternoon is helping to extinguish the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. The Black Forest Fire within the Colorado Springs city limits killed two people Tuesday while they were trying to flee, and before the rain began it was still raging out of control.

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa told reporters the bodies of two people were found about 2 pm Thursday in their garage with the car doors open. They are believed to have died Tuesday afternoon as their Black Forest neighborhood was being evacuated. Their identities have not yet been released.

Since it started on Tuesday, the wind-driven Black Forest Fire has consumed 24.5 square miles, destroyed 389 homes and forced the evacuation of 41,000 people. Since the rain began, law enforcement officials have lifted all mandatory evacuation notices, warning that they could be re-imposed if the fire spreads again.

An estimated 800 responders are working to contain the the Black Forest fire, which before the rain started was just five percent contained. At least 140 personnel from the Colorado National Guard and National Guard members from as far away as North Carolina are assisting civil authorities with firefighting support.

Until Thursday, last year’s Waldo Canyon fire, 10 miles west of the current blaze, had topped the list of Colorado’s most destructive fires, with 346 homes destroyed. Now the Black Forest fire is considered the state’s most destructive....

A night time image of the Black Forest Fire at 9:30 pm on the night of the first day, 11 June 2013. Photo was taken from the Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood of Colorado Springs on the lower slope of Cheyenne Mountain, about 20 miles away.  Shot by Ahodges7, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Colorado wildfires: Crews prepare for worst, expect average season

Jordan Steffen in the Denver Post: Spring rains and snow have made it unlikely there will be a repeat of last year's wildfire season — during which six people died and about 650 homes were destroyed — but fire crews in Colorado are prepared for the worst. Crews are stationed across the state, and fire management officers are looking for ways to mobilize equipment and firefighters to wildland blazes within hours instead of days.

Still, Coloradans must remain vigilant during what is predicted to be an average, and yet challenging, fire season in most areas of the state, Gov. John Hickenlooper said Thursday morning during his annual fire briefing. "It's important to recognize that it's not fighting fires, but preparing to fight fires," he said. "Coupled with that preparedness is prevention."

By this time last year, the Lower North Fork wildfire had already scorched thousands of acres in Jefferson County after embers from a state prescribed burn sparked the blaze. Local emergency-response agencies struggled to assess the speed of the fire and waited to order evacuations as the fire burned toward homes. Three people were killed in the fire, and almost two dozen homes were destroyed.

After that fire, Hickenlooper moved the firefighting and controlled-burn responsibilities of the Colorado Forest Service and the state Division of Emergency Management under the command of the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Under the new structure, and using lessons from multiple massive, devastating wildfires last year, state fire management officers spent the fall and winter months working with local responders to develop plans to mobilize and organize emergency resources faster, said Paul Cooke, director of the Division of Fire Prevention and Control at the Colorado Department of Public Safety...

Nebraska National Guard crewmembers of Company C 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Battalion dump water from a Bambi bucket onto flames of the High Park fire, in Larimer County, Colo., approximately 15 miles west of Fort Collins, June 18, 2012. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Tate Petersen, Company C, 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Support), Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate change tough on Colorado Plateau

Scott Condon in the Aspen Times (Colorado): Conservationists are lobbying the Bureau of Land Management to overhaul its policies in the Colorado Plateau after the agency's own study indicated big alterations are coming over the next 50 years because of climate change.

The vast Colorado Plateau is home of the spectacular canyon country and soaring mountain ranges of western Colorado and much of Utah. It covers 32,387 square miles, much of it public land managed by the BLM. It stretches from Grand Junction on the east to St. George, Utah, on the west and from Arizona to Wyoming. Moab, Utah, the popular offseason playground for hikers, bikers and Jeepers from Aspen and throughout the Colorado mountains, is in the heart of the plateau.

The BLM recently completed a rapid ecoregional assessment that examines current conditions and analyzes how the landscape could be altered by climate change and other “change agents” such as wildfire, invasive species and road development.

“This report describes fundamental changes in how the Colorado Plateau will look and how it functions,” said Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney for Earthjustice Denver. One finding of the report is that the average annual temperature of the plateau could increase 1 degree Celsius in the short term and around 2 degrees by 2060. The biggest warming could occur during winters.

The report said predicting future precipitation amounts is more difficult, but the trend is for a drier climate in the short term and a radical mix of periods of much drier and much wetter weather by 2060. The variation is due to the extreme terrain — low canyons will be drier; mountain ranges will be wetter during summers...

Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, shot by National Park Service, public domain