The Four Mile Canyon Fire started Monday, September 6^th, at approximately 10:00 AM about 5 miles West of Boulder, Colorado. They know the cause was “human”, but they don’t know if it was accidental or intentional.

The fire took off in steep terrain with a mixture of Douglas fir, Ponderosa pine, and grasses as fuel, pushed by low humidity and gusty winds. I have been monitoring it, but yesterday the humidity went up and the winds died, so it looked like they would be able to get it under control.

Well, Hermine intervened. The remnant low from Hermine that has been responsible for flooding and storms in Texas, Oklahoma and that general neighborhood, has kicked up the winds, and they aren’t the water-filled winds creating the havoc in the Southeast.

Currently the fire has burned more than 6350 acres and is 30% contained. So far the local Sheriff’s Department has confirmed that 169 homes have been destroyed. Only four people are reported missing, and there are no confirmed deaths. Twenty subdivisions west of Boulder have been evacuated and 3 major County Roads are closed because of the fire.

The Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests and the Pawnee National Grassland are affected and the fire has been elevated to a Type 1 Incident.

There are currently 550 firefighters 13 crews, 75 engines, 5 helicopters, and 7 air tankers at the scene, with more resources on the way.

It would seem that another group of whackos is upset that the whackos in Gainesville are stealing their schtick. McClatchy reports:

One of those angry at a Florida preacher’s plans to mark Sept. 11 by setting fire to copies of the Quran is Shirley Phelps Roper, a leader of the Westboro Baptist Church.
…

It’s that in 2008 she and her father’s Topeka flock set fire to a Quran in plain view on a Washington, D.C., street and nobody seemed to care.

“We did it a long time before this guy,” Phelps-Roper said by telephone from a street corner in downtown Chicago, scene of the latest Westboro picket — against Jews this time, not gays.

The difference could be that in 2008 many news media outlets had decided to ignore the group’s routine of spewing hatred at funerals of fallen American soldiers.

Well, Ms Phelps Roper is an attorney, and the Westboro Baptist Church does make the bulk of its money from law suits against people who object to their “performance art”, so this would be an obvious move.

The event in Gainesville is “news” only because the media decided to make it news. It has no more validity today than it had in 2008.

Position: 15.4N 28.0W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [295°] near 13 mph [20 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1004 mb.

Currently about 245 miles [390 km] West of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]