Climate.org has taken a look at the climate conditions that helped lead up to the fires in Colorado a week or so ago. The area started unusually wet, which allowed the grass to grow lush and tall. Then a drought came and that region of Colorado ended up in extreme drought. It did not take much to start the fire, and with winds of 100 mph coming down the mountains, nothing could stand in its way once it got started. The firefighters knew that they would not be able to stop the fire in those conditions and so concentrated on getting people out of harm’s way, and only two people out of many thousands evacuated are missing. You can read more at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/wet-then-dry-extremes-contributed-devastating-marshall-fire-colorado. Here in the Southeast, we had a somewhat similar situation in 2016, when a very wet spring led to a lot of ground cover. When a dry spell and drought occurred a few months later, the dried out grasses and trees were the perfect fuel for wildfires.
