Rains may come next week to West Fork Fire Complex area
SOUTH FORK — Forecasts are predicting the monsoon season may work into areas hit by the Papoose and West Fork fires as soon as the end of next week.
But whether the annual weather pattern that brings moisture up from Mexico and into Southern Colorado is enough to alter fire behavior or even allow for a change in firefighting tactics remains to be seen.
Mark De Gregorio, a public information officer for the fire management team, said even if fire behavior changed from extreme to normal, the amount of standing dead spruce trees in the path of the two fires would still pose an obstacle.
"With this kind of fuel, the definition of normal is kind of different," he said.
Under such conditions fire officials would still refrain from putting firefighters in standing dead trees.
In the first week after the start of the 48,652-acre Papoose and the descent of the 56,568-acre West Fork from the Continental Divide, Incident Commander Pete Blume told media repeatedly that any break in the fires would have to come from the weather, such as the development of a strong monsoon season.
That may or may not happen.
Scott Carpenter, a meteorologist assigned to the fire's weather team from the National Weather Service, said the 30-day outlook for the fire complex includes a higher probability of above-normal precipitation.
But he added that even then, the July average precipitation in Alamosa is 0.9 inches and in Durango it's over 1.5 inches, so the monsoon may not deliver enough moisture to alter fire behavior.
And should any change in fire behavior come, it would likely be from multiple storms given the size of the fires.
"Being such a large area, it would be fairly unlikely that a single cell would come over it and provide wetting rain," he said.