With all the moisture and heavy snow we had through May, we were feeling pretty good about the lack of fire danger. It was one of the clearest Junes I can remember in a long time, and was also the only fire-free June for the region I can remember since we moved here. But apparently, the growth of grasses andflowers from all our moist soils is not always a good thing. Because now all those grasses that are over a foot high are drying out quickly with our hot temperatures of summer and little to no rain during the month of June (0.44 precip). We got notified by our neighbors that yesterday, a small fire started less than 1/2 mile down the road on some Forest Service land that borders the neighborhood. Fortunately, people saw it, called it in, and the local Nederland fire department quickly snuffed it out. This isn’t the first time this year we had a close call. The beginning of May, somebody was shooting at “exploding” targets on a ridge across from our house and set the ridge on fire. Fortunately, the moisture from the spring kept it from spreading and the local fire departments quickly responded to the 3-acre fire and put that one out.
The great irony of yesterday’s fire is that we got our first significant precipitation in several weeks, when thunderstorms dropped a great deal of rain and hail in the span of 30 minutes. Fortunately, this looks to be a more common occurrence as we head into the “monsoon season”. For those not from this area, that probably seems like pretty strange terminology, as monsoon makes me think something that happens in India, not Colorado. But in Colorado, from about early July to mid-August, moisture from the Gulf of Mexico funnels north up into Colorado and brings significant rain and thunderstorms. Two years ago, when we had one of the driest springs on records, what saved us from a record fire season was the monsoon season brought over 8 inches of rain in the month of July. So despite the negative connotations the term “monsoon” may bring for others, for those of us who live in the mountains of Colorado, we say bring on the monsoon!
