Posts tagged wild
Boulder High winds and Fire Danger today. Small fire on Lee Hill #boulderfire
Nov 12th
11/12/12:31 Lee Hill fire: Roughly 50 firefighters are on scene right now.
The fire in Fourmile is in the 3000 block of Fourmile. The fire was last estimated to be approximately 200 feet wide. Latest reports indicate figrefighters have contained the fire. Lee Hill and Old Stage are re open and evacs cancelled. Deertrail remains closed.
The fire in Fourmile is in the 3000 block of Fourmile. The fire was last estimated to be approximately 200 feet wide. Latest reports indicate figrefighters have contained the fire. Lee Hill and Old Stage are re open and evacs cancelled. Deertrail remains closed.
163 reverse 911 calls went out. Fire department is monitoring both fires but danger has been lifter. Lee Hill fire appears to be started by wind blowing branch on power lines. 1 structure, a garage was lost and and auto was burned.
Fire command center is at Lee Hill.
3000 block of Fourmile fire ( carterfire was started by down power lines according to OEM spokesperson.
OEM reports:
11/12 12:05 p.m. – Boulder Wildfires
There are two fires in Boulder County. There is currently no threat to the City of Boulder.
First responders are on scene at both sites. The Emergency Operations Center is open and monitoring the situation, providing support as needed.
The fire at Lee Hill and Deer Trail is approximately 1-2 acres in size. An evacuation order has been issued for all residents in a one mile radius of the intersection of Deer Trail and Lee Hill. Roughly 50 firefighters are on scene right now.
The fire in Fourmile is in the 3000 block of Fourmile. The fire was last estimated to be approximately 200 feet wide. Latest reports indicate figrefighters have contained the fire. Lee Hill and Old Stage are re open and evacs cancelled. Deertrail remains closed.
Carter fire second fire: 5 engines 18 firefighters on scene up hill approximately 400 feet and second fire has broken out next to it. near 3000 block Four Mile according to Boulder county dispatch. 30% containment
High Wind Warning today.
A 1/2 acre fire has broken out at Deer Trail and Lee Hill Road. Many agencies are on scene. Wild land fire department are putting out hot spots according to Boulder county dispatch. Staff at OEM is starting to show up according to Mike Chard
Twitter reports road closures at Old Stage and Lee Hill but Boulder County dispatch says no. 163 reverse 911 calls 50 firefighters
In the City:
A few transformers blew today and are being repaired by Xcel
City of Boulder is working a garage fire at 9th and Marine according to city of boulder dispatch
High Wind warnings
URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
404 AM MST SAT NOV 12 2011
…HIGH WINDS TO IMPACT THE FRONT RANGE FOOTHILLS TODAY…
.A STRONG STORM SYSTEM WILL MOVE FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
ACROSS COLORADO ON SATURDAY. WESTERLY WINDS WILL INCREASE IN
ADVANCE OF THIS SYSTEM THIS MORNING…AND THEN CONTINUE THROUGH
DAY AS THE STORM SYSTEM PASSES ACROSS THE REGION.
PEOPLE PLANNING TRAVEL SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR STRONG CROSS WINDS
CAUSING HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS. DRIVERS OF LIGHT WEIGHT OR
HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES SHOULD CONSIDER DELAYING TRAVEL OR USE
ALTERNATE ROUTES. IF YOU ARE DRIVING ON THE ROADWAYS SLOW DOWN
AND REMAIN ALERT FOR SUDDEN AND STRONG WIND GUSTS.
COZ035-036-038-039-121900-
/O.CON.KBOU.HW.W.0007.000000T0000Z-111113T0100Z/
LARIMER AND BOULDER COUNTIES BETWEEN 6000 AND 9000 FEET-
JEFFERSON AND WEST DOUGLAS COUNTIES ABOVE 6000 FEET/GILPIN/CLEAR
CREEK/NORTHEAST PARK COUNTIES BELOW 9000 FEET-
LARIMER COUNTY BELOW 6000 FEET/NORTHWEST WELD COUNTY-
BOULDER AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES BELOW 6000 FEET/WEST BROOMFIELD
COUNTY-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…ESTES PARK…GLENDEVEY…NEDERLAND…
RED FEATHER LAKES…BAILEY…CENTRAL CITY…EVERGREEN…
GEORGETOWN…IDAHO SPRINGS…WESTCREEK…FORT COLLINS…
HEREFORD…LOVELAND…NUNN…ARVADA…BOULDER…GOLDEN…
LAKEWOOD…LONGMONT
404 AM MST SAT NOV 12 2011
…HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM MST THIS
EVENING…
A HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM MST THIS
EVENING.
* TIMING…WESTERLY WINDS WILL INCREASE ACROSS THE FRONT RANGE
FOOTHILLS THIS MORNING AND CONTINUE THROUGH DAY.
* WINDS…WEST WINDS WILL INCREASE TO 30 TO 50 MPH WITH GUSTS IN
EXCESS OF 75 MPH POSSIBLE.
* IMPACTS…TRAVEL ACROSS NORTH TO SOUTH HIGHWAYS AND ROADS WILL
BE VERY DIFFICULT DUE TO STRONG AND GUSTY CROSS WINDS. AREAS
SUSCEPTIBLE TO HIGH WINDS INCLUDE…HIGHWAY 93 BETWEEN GOLDEN
AND BOULDER…HIGHWAY C-470 ALONG THE FOOTHILLS IN JEFFERSON
COUNTY…U.S. HIGHWAY 36 BETWEEN BROOMFIELD AND ESTES PARK…
THE PEAK TO PEAK HIGHWAY FROM ESTES PARK THROUGH BLACKHAWK…
U.S. HIGHWAY 287 FROM LAFAYETTE TO THE WYOMING BORDER…AS
WELL AS THE CARTER LAKE AND HORSETOOTH RESERVOIR AREAS IN
LARIMER COUNTY.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…
REMEMBER…A HIGH WIND WARNING MEANS THAT STRONG AND POTENTIALLY
DAMAGING WINDS ARE EITHER OCCURRING OR HIGHLY LIKELY.
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.
Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks to host photo contest
Jul 15th
The City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) department has begun its 2011 Amateur Photography Contest. Any amateur photographer may enter photographs taken on OSMP lands. Entries must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011. Judges will be looking for photographs that capture the beauty and excitement of the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks.
Categories include:
• People and Recreation – may include shots of people and pets enjoying OSMP;
• Flora and Fauna – any plant or wild animal on OSMP lands;
• Scenic – landscapes that may include wildlife, flora or other elements of OSMP;
• Cultural Resources and History – images containing cultural and historic pieces;
• Under 18 years old – photographers younger than 18 years may enter photographs from any of the above categories; and
• Staff – for City of Boulder employees and their families.
There are both color and black and white subcategories.
Winning photographs will be on display at the Ranger Cottage at Chautauqua Trailhead, 900 Baseline Road in Boulder, beginning Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011. Winning photos will also be displayed in an online photo gallery on the OSMP website.
Prizes from local merchants will be awarded to the two “Best of Show” winners and to first, second and third place in each category.
Please visit www.bouldercolorado.gov/osmp/photocontest for more information, rules and entry forms.
