Monday and Tuesday are the seventh and eighth days this month with red flag warnings in southern Colorado. The extreme dryness this month has enhanced our fire threat beyond the typical grass fires we're used to at this time of year.
Remember the grass fire on Thursday near the Schriever Space Force Base? This is a typical springtime fire in southern Colorado. But we've been dry for so long, dry grasses aren't the only concern.
From March 1st through 17th, Colorado Springs has picked up 0.04 inches of moisture and Pueblo has received 0.01 inches. For the month-to-date, that's the 11th driest for Pueblo and the 18th driest in Colorado Springs.
That's not how we started the year. Remember all of our snowstorms in January? That translated to more than twice our normal precipitation in Colorado Springs. Then we picked up average moisture in February. But in the last couple of days, we've gone below average for the year to date.
In Pueblo, your January was even wetter, at nearly three times average. February was dry and this month has been bone dry.
Wildfires burn with many types of fuels. Fire agencies and forecasters classify these fuels based on how long they take to dry out. In our region, one-hour drying fuels are short and thin grasses. That was the main fuel source with the Meridian Fire and the fire on the west side of Colorado Springs. Ten-hour drying fuels are less than an inch in diameter and include shrubs and small branches.
And one-hundred-hour drying fuels are one to three inches in diameter and include medium-sized branches. These take about four days to dry out.
Grass fire danger here is high often because it only takes one dry downslope day to dry out the grass and give us high fire threats. But after multiple weeks with little precipitation and several downslope drying events, the National Interagency Fire Center estimates fuels like this are also extremely dry in parts of southern Colorado.
In these prolonged dry periods, fires also tend to spread faster and be more intense. Ten-hour and one-hundred-hour fuels often include buried dead plant material and can make it harder to get fires under control.
The main takeaway here is that while grass fires remain our biggest threat this time of year, in periods of extended dry weather we need to pay attention to larger foliage too.
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