Colorado wildfires signal one of state's worst seasons ever

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – As merciless wildfires blaze throughout the West, exhausted firefighters are bracing for more.

By Ed Andrieski, AP

A forest burns Tuesday near Livermore, Colo.

By Ed Andrieski, AP

A forest burns Tuesday near Livermore, Colo.

Colorado is on the brink of one of its worst fire seasons in history, blamed on very high temperatures and a very low snowpack, which left mountains tinder-dry.

After 10 punishing days, the largest fire here, the High Park Fire near Fort Collins, was 55% contained Tuesday night, according to Brett Haberstick of the Interagency Wildfire Dispatch Center.

It has incinerated 189 homes; almost 2,000 are still threatened. It has burned 93 square miles; 1,911 firefighters are trying to halt the destruction. Cost so far: $17.2 million. The fire was set by lightning June 9.

Several other fast-growing fires have broken out in the state. Gov. John Hickenlooper has banned outdoor fires and all fireworks except municipal displays.

The danger of high winds will be lower for a few days, but winds could kick up by the weekend and fan flames in the interior West and the Rockies, said meteorologist Ed Delgado at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.

There's a possibility of thunderstorms in the Southwest and the Rockies on Sunday or Monday, he said. If there is lightning but little or no rain, that could ignite more fires.

Army National Guard police are running checkpoints to deter looters and sightseers. Michael Maher, 30, of Denver, was charged with impersonating a firefighter after police say he posted Facebook photos of himself in firefighting helicopters and with the governor at the High Park command post.

Other wildfires:

•In California, firefighters were able to contain 75% of a 1½-square-mile wildfire in mountainous eastern San Diego County despite gusty winds and low humidity.

•New Mexico's Little Bear Fire near Ruidoso has burned 62 square miles and 242 residential and commercial structures and 12 outbuildings. It was 60% contained.

•The Poco Fire near Young, Ariz., has burned 6 square miles and is a threat to electrical transmission lines that serve Phoenix and Tucson. It was 15% contained.

•The Russells Camp Fire has burned 4 square miles in the southwest corner of Converse County, Wyo., mostly in the Medicine Bow National Forest.

•In northwest Nebraska, a fire has charred an estimated 8 square miles in Sioux County.

•In Hawaii, Maui firefighters were monitoring the wind-driven Kula Fire that prompted an evacuation and damaged three homes.

Hughes also reports for the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Weise reported from San Francisco. Contributing: the Associated Press.

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Hurricane seasons ends, but Irene's effects remain (AP)

By KELLI KENNEDY and TONY WINTON, Associated Press Kelli Kennedy And Tony Winton, Associated Press – Wed Nov 30, 2:42 pm ET

MIAMI – Say goodbye to the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, which was a study in contradictions: It spared the usual Southern targets while Irene paralyzed the Eastern seaboard and devastated parts of the Northeast with deadly flooding.

The season ended Wednesday as the sixth straight year without U.S. landfall of a major hurricane, yet Irene was one of the costliest storms in U.S. history and killed at least 47 people here and at least eight more in the Caribbean and Canada.

Irene was not considered a major hurricane because it did not have winds exceeding 111 mph, or Category 3, when it made landfall in North Carolina on Aug. 27.

"You would think the impacts would be somewhat light, but the damages caused by Irene will be up there in one of the top 30 or so storms," National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said.

The season produced the third-highest number of tropical storms on record, with 19, but only a slightly higher-than-average number of hurricanes, with six.

Read said low pressure systems on the East coast and high pressure systems over the central U.S. created favorable steering currents that kept the storms mostly churning far out to sea.

Storms won't move into high pressure, clearing the way for an easy storm season for the U.S. Gulf Coast. An exception was Tropical Storm Lee, which formed off the Louisiana coast and drenched much of the eastern U.S.

"It was another very odd year," said Dr. Jeff Masters, Weather Underground's director of meteorology.

The rare combination of near-record ocean temperatures but unusually dry, stable air over the Atlantic was partially responsible for the unusually high count of named storms, Masters said.

Hurricane Ophelia was the strongest storm of the season, at one point strengthening to a Category 4 with 140 mph winds when it was just northeast of Bermuda. Ophelia hit southeastern Newfoundland, Canada, as a tropical storm, but caused little damage.

The last major hurricane to hit the U.S. was Wilma, which cut an unusually large swath of damage across Florida in 2005.

Irene caught many New England residents by surprise in late August, following a rare path as it brushed up the Eastern seaboard from North Carolina, across the Mid-Atlantic and near New York City, where meteorologists said they couldn't ever recall a direct hurricane hit.

Broadway shows were cancelled as New York officials ordered 370,000 people to leave their homes in low-lying areas and immobilized the nation's biggest subway system. Yet, the city sustained only high winds and heavy rains as a weakened Tropical Storm Irene churned up the coast.

Tropical Storm Irene was by far the most destructive event to hit Vermont in almost a century. Flooding from the storm, which dumped up to 11 inches of rain in some areas, killed six people, damaged or destroyed hundreds of miles of roads, scores of bridges, hundreds of homes and left hundreds of people homeless.

About a dozen communities were cut off by the storm for days, many without electricity or phone service and they had to be supplied by National Guard helicopters.

Three months after the storm, most of the roads and bridges have received at least temporary repairs, though two bridges remain closed. The final repair estimate for the roads could reach $250 million, which doesn't count damage to private property.

The state of Vermont's office complex in Waterbury was inundated, forcing the relocation of the offices of many of the people who worked there as well as the permanent closing of the State Hospital, forcing mental health officials to farm out patients needing the most intensive care.

More than 7,000 people asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance.

"(The severe flooding) was beyond what most people expected up there so we still have work to do on how to convey how serious the inland flooding events are from these tropical storms," Read said.

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Associated Press Writer Wilson Ring contributed to this report from Vermont.

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Online:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

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