Fire and Ice, Part 2

This is not the first time we’ve had wildfires followed by snow and icy temperatures. The last time was a little more than a  year ago, in October 2020, when a combination of dry and windy conditions started four fires in the mountains that raced over the mountains. At the time, everyone was shocked; we rarely had fires in October and never, in recent memory, had a fire jumped over the tundra to land on the east side of the mountains and race toward the nearest town, Estes Park.

But the fire last week was even more shocking because it started in December, usually one of our colder months of the year, and it started in grasslands, some 10 miles east of the closest forests. Pushed by 100 mph gusts that funneled through a canyon to the west, it arrived in the last place you expect a wildfire: a suburban shopping mall where Costco shoppers fled the building only to find thick smoke in the parking lot.

Then the fire did something else no one expected: it leapt over the highway and raced toward subdivisions where no one had ever expected to see flames burning except in  barbecue grills. Unable to outrace or outfight the windstorm, firefighters could only watch helplessly, while trying to evacuate as many people as possible.

What played out is well known: 1,000 homes destroyed in what everyone assumed was the safety of suburbia: winding cul-de-sacs of ranch homes and backyards, playgrounds, schools, restaurants, banks, a recreation center and police station.  

And then nature delivered another whammy: a snowstorm and frigid temperatures. People who didn’t lose their homes had to deal with power outages and cold weather. It was a double message from climate change: first the fire, then the cold.

When I came to the cabin a few days later, I found at least 2 feet of snow. For the first time this season, I was able to cross-country ski. I took a lap around the perimeter of Meeker Park, grateful for the chance to ski again, for breathing in cold, clean air, to see the world white again, any ugliness covered over.

After the horribly destructive winds of the past week, there was calm, not even a breeze to ruffle the grasses that were still standing or shake the snow off the branches of the ponderosas. Mount Meeker, for almost the first time this season, was covered in snow. I could see small physical remains of the wind that had been so destructive: pockets of snow that had been pushed and then stabilized around stalks of plants (right). Nature had arrived at some relief, some balance, for the time being.

I breathed in the calm as much as the cold.

Comments

[Julene Bair]

1000 homes lost. It's hard to imagine how that can happen, but it is happening with increasing regularity here in California, and now in Boulder County, where I once lived. There is nowhere to run.