Today I brought a paycheck in to Boulder and took a drive with my buddy Juan up to Magnolia Road where I knew It's possible to see to the north for quite a ways.
First the good news. There is a light rain and the fire hardly expanded today or overnight. The papers have had to make do with old photos of leaping flames from the first day. The fire is no longer racing uncontrolled across the countryside gobbling up houses and trees in it's path. The bad stuff after the jump.
Above is the eastern portion of the fire. I have a cheap super zoom with a Leica lens.
Smoke can still be seen rising off the already burnt earth and small plumes of smoke puffing up as the fire burns up another couple of trees. A tiny dot is a slurry bomber making a pass after dropping another load of retardant.
As every day now there are at least a couple of news releases, one mid morning and one in the afternoon. The number of homes lost is hovering somewhere around 140 making this the worst Colorado fire on record as far as number of homes lost. They are still calling this fire zero percent contained, and there are no casualties as of this time, as they find missing people and cross names off lists things look pretty good as far as loss of life goes.
I knew of the overlook from living in the area for years, so apparently did a lot of other people. Some tech head had a video camera and tranmission antena he was towing beside his Hummer. A lot of folks from Magnolia Road stopped by on their way back from town to see how things were today.
The winds which were slowly out of the east had switched direction 180 degrees as I got back to town due to some advancing rain clouds. The rain has been very light and who knows how much fell on which part of the fire. Tomorrow looks to be an important day as Friday and Saturday are predicted to have increasing winds and temperatures. Earlier today they predicted containment in 10 days, maybe they are trying to forestall some of the building pressure from homeowners to allow people to return to their homes.
The green parts are burnt, orange and red not burnt, the width of the satellite picture is maybe five or six miles.
The mountain behind is Twin Sisters in Estes Park below is an enlargement.
The unburnt grassy areas in the foreground are what remains of the devastating Sugarloaf Fire in the early 90s I think. I was gone for quite a spell back then.