[TOMAHAWK9521]

Well, the drought is over. At least for N Colorado. God is willing but now we have to worry about the river rising, mud slides and wash outs. Large rocks and debris from the burn areas have already been reported on Highway 14 yesterday after 2 days of afternoon storms rolling through. A massive, slow moving storm parked itself over the High Park burn area for most of the day before settling over Ft. Collins. This same storm reduced visibility over by Walden in North Park to absolute zero for a period of time due to heavy, black clouds and monsoon-type rains. A local radio station 107.9 FM broadcasted alerts for flash flood watches through tonight.

As for the burn area. I rode the bike up to Cameron Pass on the 4th. The fire fighters did a hell of a job saving a number places. One particular property in Poudre Park had a large pine tree right next to the privacy fence and was completely black on one side and green on the other. I know many homes and structures were lost but where the fighters could get in there, they stopped the flames at "danger close" proximity in many cases.

In some places it's hard to see how the fire jumped the river/highway because what should have been burned in the path of the blaze seemed untouched. My guess is that the winds were really hauling in the canyon to get burning embers to clear some of those distances. There were areas of beetle-kill that were unscathed while whole sections of what had been green, healthy trees were gone. I honestly expected to find a heck of a lot more destruction up there. Yes, there was quite of bit of evidence that the blaze had come through the canyon, but it would seem most of the fire damage was deeper in the back country above Poudre Canyon. What's bad is that the fire only destroyed barely a fraction of the diseased trees. That means we'll have all kinds of opportunities to burn again, or else someone is going to start up a lucrative fire wood industry to help clear out all that dead wood.