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Record-breaking wildfires in 2020 turned huge swaths of Western forests into barren burn scars. Those forests store winter snowpack that millions of people rely on for drinking and irrigation water. But with such large and wide-reaching fires, the science on the short-term and long-term effects to the region’s water supplies isn’t well understood.
To understand, and possibly predict what happens after a river’s headwaters goes up in flames, researchers are descending on newly created burn scars across the West to gather data in the hopes of lessening some of the impacts on drinking water systems.
On a sunny winter morning, a team of researchers led by Colorado State University hydrologist Stephanie Kampf roamed through the steep drainage of Tunnel Creek, a tributary to the Poudre River. Much of the creek burned this summer and fall during the Cameron Peak Fire west of Fort Collins, Colorado.
29 times last year, according to the National Weather Service.
The NWS Weather Prediction Center tweet shared the top five daily highs and lows in the lower contiguous U.S. in 2020, and Grand Lake was beat only by Peter Sinks, Utah, which had the coldest temperature for 94 days of the year. The overall chilliest temp of the entire year was also recorded in Colorado on December 30, when Antero Reservoir reached 50 below.
The hottest place in 2020 was, not surprisingly, Death Valley, which had the highest temperature 106 days (basically one third) of the year.
Grand Lake is less than 50 miles west of Fort Collins, and was one of the towns impacted by the East Troublesome Fire in October of 2020, but the community is rebuilding.
RMNP Announces Winter Pile Burning Operations
With the colder and wetter conditions, fire managers from Rocky Mountain National Park are taking full advantage of that and burning piles of slash from fuels reduction projects and hazard tree removal. Slash have been being piled from these projects for about the past two years and are now ready to burn.
According to an official press release from Rocky Mountain National Park, these types of projects were a big factor in helping contain the East Troublesome Fire and the Fern Lake Fire back in 2012 from jumping Bear Lake Road and Trail Ridge Road.
GREELEY, Colorado â Record-breaking wildfires in 2020 turned huge swaths of Western forests into barren, sooty scars. Those forests store winter snowpack that millions of people downstream rely on for drinking and irrigation water. But with such large and wide-reaching fires, the science on the short-term and long-term effects to the regionâs water supplies isnât well understood.
To understand, and possibly predict, what happens after a riverâs headwaters goes up in flames, researchers are descending on fresh burn scars across the West to gather data in the hopes of lessening some of the impacts on drinking water systems.
On a sunny winter morning, a team of researchers led by Colorado State University hydrologist Stephanie Kampf roamed through the steep drainage of Tunnel Creek, a tributary to the Poudre River west of Fort Collins. Much of the area burned last summer and fall during the Cameron Peak Fire.