Two Of Colorado's Major Wildfires -- East Troublesome Fire And Cameron Peak Fire -- Could Merge
DENVER(CBS4)- With the recent one-day surge of the East Troublesome Fire of 20 miles in Grand County, the question arises as to how close that puts it to the Cameron Peak Fire burning in Larimer County?
The East Troublesome Fire exploded an additional 100,000 acres from Wednesday to Thursday morning with wind gusts up to 40 mph -- and then another 50,000 acres on Thursday.
That fire expansion was enough to send flames into Rocky Mountain National Park. This brings the Cameron Peak Fire less than 10 miles from the East Troublesome.
With this proximity it is entirely possible that the two fires could merge together.
"It is a potential, and certainly this year has been one of those years where those low potential events seem to be happening with high frequency," Noel Livingston, incident commander, said Thursday night. "And, you know, a fire of this size, moving this far in October is a very low potential event in terms of what we would expect, and it's occurred."
"I don't want to say you can't happen right now. It doesn't appear that it's going to," Livington said.
The driving force for that to happen will be more wind on Thursday afternoon and another wind event possibility on Saturday before the big Sunday cold front that may bring much welcome snow and cold across Colorado.