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Boulder Burn Scar from Fourmile Canyon Fire and Story from NASA #boulderfire #boulder
Aug 2nd
In September 2010, the Fourmile Canyon Fire broke out in the foothills west of Boulder, Colorado, scorching more than 6,000 acres (2,500 hectares) and forcing residents to evacuate. Ten months later, residents had to evacuate again, this time to flee floods. Stripped of vegetation, the slopes along Fourmile Canyon soaked up little of the water dropped by a thunderstorm. Instead, the runoff surged into local stream channels.
On June 7, 2011, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite observed the Fourmile Canyon burn scar. The top image is made from a combination of shortwave infrared and visible light. The bottom image is natural color.
The scar is more easily detected in the false-color image, where the burned area appears in shades of red and orange. Creek valleys, which generally escaped the flames in September 2010, form winding corridors of green through the scar. To the east and southeast, the city of Boulder lies on relatively flat land.
After the fire, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) warned residents to prepare for the possibility of flooding, even from small rainstorms. Late on July 13, 2011, such a storm occurred. As rain fell west of Boulder, Fourmile Creek rose rapidly. In fact, at one USGS gauge, the water discharge rate skyrocketed in a matter of minutes from 10 cubic feet per second to 350 cubic feet per second. The increased water flow translated into a 4-foot (1.2-meter) surge down the creek. Smaller surges followed later that night and over the next few days.
Fourmile Creek is a tributary of Boulder Creek, which flows eastward through the city. Water levels usually peak between mid-May and early July. But thanks to the melting of an unusually heavy snowpack, water levels on Boulder Creek were especially high when the July 13 thunderstorm struck. As residents in the Fourmile burn area were ordered to evacuate low-lying homes, emergency sirens also sounded in Boulder.
By late July 2011, water levels had receded along both the Fourmile and Boulder Creeks, although water levels in both remained above normal. Colorado’s monsoon season typically lasts from about mid-July to early September, so the possibility of more flooding remains.
Because of the angle of sunlight, these images may cause an optical illusion known as relief inversion.
References
Byars, M. (2011, July 13). Heavy rains hit Fourmile, prompt evacuations along Boulder Creek. Boulder Daily Camera. Accessed July 29, 2011.
Colorado Mountain Club. Protecting Yourself from Mountain Hazards. Accessed July 29, 2011.
Colorado Water Science Center. (2011, July 13). Video From Fourmile Creek at Orodell. USGS. Accessed July 29, 2011.
Colorado’s Surface Water Conditions. (2011, July 29). Boulder Creek at Boulder, Colorado. State of Colorado. Accessed July 29, 2011.
National Water and Climate Center. (2011, July 7). Weekly Report – Snowpack/Drought Monitor Update. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Accessed July 29, 2011.
National Water Information System. (2011, July 29). USGS 06727410 Fourmile Creek at Logan Mill Road near Crisman, Colorado. USGS. Accessed July 29, 2011.
National Water Information System. (2011, July 29). USGS 06727500 Fourmile Creek at Orodell, Colorado. USGS. Accessed July 29, 2011.
News staff. (2011, July 13). Thunderstorms pound area; flood sirens sound in Boulder. The Denver Post. Accessed July 29, 2011.
Ruddy, B.C., Stevens, M.R., Verdin, K.L., and Elliott, J.G. (2010). Probability and volume of potential postwildfire debris flows in the 2010 Fourmile burn area, Boulder County, Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010–1244. Accessed July 29, 2011.
Snider, L. (2011, June 8). Boulder Creek swells as warm weather melts snowpack. Boulder Daily Camera. Accessed July 29, 2011.
NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team and the United States Geological Survey. Caption by Michon Scott.
Weekday closures of Cherryvale Road in effect
Aug 2nd
Boulder County, Colo. – Cherryvale Road is closed to all vehicles, including bicycles, between Arapahoe and Baseline roads on weekdays only (Monday-Friday) from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. until Aug. 12.
The closures include Old Tale Road at Arapahoe and McSorley Lane and Dimmit Drive between Gapter Road and Cherryvale. Pedestrians and bicycles are allowed on Dimmit.
Detours on 55th and 75th streets are in effect and marked with signage. Accommodations have been made to allow passage of emergency vehicles and school buses along with local traffic and delivery vehicles to homes within the work zone.
The closures are to allow for the timely completion of the Cherryvale Road reconstruction project.
“Cherryvale is a busy road,” Boulder County Transportation Planner Tim Swope said. “We’ve been getting much of the construction done with traffic, but we need two weeks of no daytime traffic in order to finish the remaining tasks. Our goal is to have most of the major construction done by the time school starts in mid-August.”
Boulder County anticipates completing final asphalt paving and road and shoulder striping during the closure. Final support shoulders, roadside grading, construction of a six-foot pedestrian path between Cherryvale and Reserve Drive, and landscaping will likely be completed once the road has reopened to traffic.
All construction is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 1, barring weather delays or unforeseen circumstances.
Once completed, the project will result in a new roadway, improved drainage, five-foot bicycle shoulders and a new soft-surface pedestrian path alongside the Cherryvale Road between Reserve Drive and Arapahoe Road.
Schedules are subject to change. Message boards are located in the area to alert residents of any construction schedule changes. Visit www.BoulderCounty.org/Transportation or contact Tim Swope at 720-564-2658 or tswope@bouldercounty.org for additional information and updates.
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My landlord, the rabbit and the rattler By Ron Baird
Aug 1st
My landlord, Jack, comes by from time to time and more often than not we sit and talk. He’s in his early 80s and looks like the farm kid he once was, with thick arms, big hands and a chest that hasn’t fallen much to the ravages of time.
His shock of gray hair has usually been wet-combed across his head, kind of like Opie of Mayberry at 75 if he hadn’t gone bald. He favors flannel shirts, jeans and workboots and often has a pipe clamped in his teeth, puffing away without inhaling.
He talks about climbing Colorado’s mountains back in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, when trips were made in old jalopies, the roads were narrow and winding and gear was primitive and heavy. He was at the University of Colorado then and he and a bunch of his climbing buddies scaled most of the 14ers in the state.
He graduated with a degree in some kind of engineering and has gone on to a full life of work and family here in Boulder. His wife is healthy, his kids are healthy and happy and have families of their own.
He’s building a steel-hulled boat in his back yard, has been for years, and fully expects to launch it into the ocean at some point in the future.
Jack is also a native of Boulder, grew up on a farm/ranch a ways north of town. He calls it a farm but I know that ground and there isn’t much that can be grown on it except cactus and wild grass and as it turns out subdivisions and mountain mansions. He was relating how lonely it was living out there as a kid.
I don’t know how we got around to it, but we were discussing rattlers, which were common back then. And he told me a story.
“One day when I was about 10, we heard the damnedest ruckus coming from the field behind the house and we went out to see what the hell was going on. When we got out there, there was a mother rabbit standing between a rattler and her babies, which were in a nest in the grass. I guess the rattler wanted to make a meal out of them babies and the mother was having none of it. When the snake started forward, she’d move towards it. The snake would coil and she would lunge, drawing a strike. At the last second, she would spin away and kick the snake in the head with both hind feet, knocking it away. The snake would gather itself and start forward and she’d do the same thing again. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw.
“Now, you have to understand that we weren’t very sentimental about such things back in those days. So we just watched. And besides, we’d never seen anything like that. Who could have imagined a momma rabbit would, or could, do something like that to protect her babies? But this went on for, I would guess, 20 minutes. Every time that snake started forward, she would kick it again. You could tell they were both getting pretty tired but the snake wasn’t giving up and neither was she. But the snake was bleeding from the eyes and mouth, and the bleeding was getting worse and worse. And it seemed to be disoriented and would lay there longer and longer before trying again. The rabbit would lay down, and its sides were fluttering she was breathing so hard. But when the snake got up so would the rabbit.
“Finally, the snake didn’t move anymore. I don’t think it was dead exactly, but it was dying. It’s head looked like somebody had hit it with a baseball bat. I wasn’t sure the mother rabbit was going to make it, either, but I’ll be damned if she didn’t finally she get up and hop to the nest where she had her babies.
“As I said, we weren’t too sentimental back then. We knew nature was hard. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how brave that momma rabbit was, so I went back to the barn and got a shovel and went out and cut that rattler’s head off, just to be safe. I think she earned that⎯not having to worry about that snake any more.”
Jack, even 65 years later, still shakes his head in admiration, as he finishes the story. “I’ve never stopped thinking about it.”
And now that I’ve heard the story, I can’t get the death duel of the momma rabbit and the rattler out of my head, either.
His shock of gray hair has usually been wet-combed across his head, kind of like Opie of Mayberry at 75 if he hadn’t gone bald. He favors flannel shirts, jeans and workboots and often has a pipe clamped in his teeth, puffing away without inhaling.
He talks about climbing Colorado’s mountains back in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, when trips were made in old jalopies, the roads were narrow and winding and gear was primitive and heavy. He was at the University of Colorado then and he and a bunch of his climbing buddies scaled most of the 14ers in the state.
He graduated with a degree in some kind of engineering and has gone on to a full life of work and family here in Boulder. His wife is healthy, his kids are healthy and happy and have families of their own.
He’s building a steel-hulled boat in his back yard, has been for years, and fully expects to launch it into the ocean at some point in the future.
Jack is also a native of Boulder, grew up on a farm/ranch a ways north of town. He calls it a farm but I know that ground and there isn’t much that can be grown on it except cactus and wild grass and as it turns out subdivisions and mountain mansions. He was relating how lonely it was living out there as a kid.
I don’t know how we got around to it, but we were discussing rattlers, which were common back then. And he told me a story.
“One day when I was about 10, we heard the damnedest ruckus coming from the field behind the house and we went out to see what the hell was going on. When we got out there, there was a mother rabbit standing between a rattler and her babies, which were in a nest in the grass. I guess the rattler wanted to make a meal out of them babies and the mother was having none of it. When the snake started forward, she’d move towards it. The snake would coil and she would lunge, drawing a strike. At the last second, she would spin away and kick the snake in the head with both hind feet, knocking it away. The snake would gather itself and start forward and she’d do the same thing again. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw.
“Now, you have to understand that we weren’t very sentimental about such things back in those days. So we just watched. And besides, we’d never seen anything like that. Who could have imagined a momma rabbit would, or could, do something like that to protect her babies? But this went on for, I would guess, 20 minutes. Every time that snake started forward, she would kick it again. You could tell they were both getting pretty tired but the snake wasn’t giving up and neither was she. But the snake was bleeding from the eyes and mouth, and the bleeding was getting worse and worse. And it seemed to be disoriented and would lay there longer and longer before trying again. The rabbit would lay down, and its sides were fluttering she was breathing so hard. But when the snake got up so would the rabbit.
“Finally, the snake didn’t move anymore. I don’t think it was dead exactly, but it was dying. It’s head looked like somebody had hit it with a baseball bat. I wasn’t sure the mother rabbit was going to make it, either, but I’ll be damned if she didn’t finally she get up and hop to the nest where she had her babies.
“As I said, we weren’t too sentimental back then. We knew nature was hard. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how brave that momma rabbit was, so I went back to the barn and got a shovel and went out and cut that rattler’s head off, just to be safe. I think she earned that⎯not having to worry about that snake any more.”
Jack, even 65 years later, still shakes his head in admiration, as he finishes the story. “I’ve never stopped thinking about it.”
And now that I’ve heard the story, I can’t get the death duel of the momma rabbit and the rattler out of my head, either.
