Western Fires Just Won't Stop

People fleeing Estes Park, Colorado Thursday as wildfires rage
nearby. Photo was taken during the day, but the smoke made
things dark as night. Photo via Twitter @KevinJBeaty

The same weather pattern I described yesterday - the big storm out over the Atlantic and the big, wintry cold wave in the northern Rockies and Plains - is helping to make the never-ending western fire season even worse.  

That's just when people thought it couldn't get any worse. 

One new fire in Colorado grew to 125,000 acres and quadrupled in size just overnight Wednesday. 

It forced - once again - hasty evacuations, reports of lots of structures lost and questions about when this and other fires will ever get under control. 

Strong west winds swept fire through stands of trees - many of them dead and bone dry from pine bark beetles.  The blaze called the East Troublesome Fire, managed to cross the Continental Divide. That's a feat considering the peaks usually are snow covered this time of year. 

This movement forced the fire toward the picturesque town of Estes Park. Parts of that town were evacuated under red skies and midday darkness caused by the smoke. 

The new East Troublesome fire is now the fourth largest fire in Colorado history. Three of the top five biggest wildfires in Colorado were/are this year. 

Strangely, low level cold air settled in to areas east of the mountains in places like Denver and Fort Collins. Those areas were socked in by clouds and even bits of freezing drizzle. But the low level cold air couldn't get past the mountains. Up there, it stayed windy and dry. 

That state of affairs will continue today in the mountains today.  

Meanwhile upper level winds are carrying the smoke east into the the cold and storminess hundreds of miles away in the upper Midwest. Skies over Minnesota were eerily dark and orange, thanks to a thick cloud cover mixed with the smoke in the clouds. 

Satellite view Thursday of clouds over the upper Midwest.
Brown smudges in the clouds is smoke from Colorado wildfires

Some of the snow coming from those clouds and accumulating on the ground was orangish-gray.  The snow was mixed with some wildfire soot. 

Back in the Rockies where the fired blaze, people are celebrating a weather forecast people would might normally dread.  The Arctic air will plunge southward in earnest over the weekend, causing near record cold and snow over the Colorado fire zone.

That will certainly help, but probably not rid the state of the fires. Conditions will once again turn dry and breezy next week.

Meanwhile, in northern California, the cold Arctic high pressure will contribute to strong northeasterly winds that will dry up and get warmer as they had toward that region.  That means a high risk of new wildfires, and worsening existing wildfires in hard hit areas like the Napa Valley, areas north of Sacramento and the Bay Area.

Forecasters are warning that strong winds Sunday night and Monday could be worse than in the devastating wine country fires in 2017.  Those fires devastated parts of Santa Rosa, California and many other areas of northern California.