AccuWeather's Tony Laubach is in Loveland, Colorado, close to where the Alexander Mountain Fire ignited on July 29, and has already grew to about 992 acres and prompted evacuations ordered.
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00:00It's wildfire season in the western United States, no doubt about that.
00:04Take a look at this. The Alexander Mountain fire sparked up west of Loveland, Colorado shortly
00:09before noon on Monday and exploded to over 800 acres in a matter of hours.
00:15This was the view from Accurate Meteorologist Tony Laubach's home about 20 miles east of the
00:20fire near Milliken yesterday evening. He joins us live from Loveland to give us the latest. Tony.
00:26Yeah, it's continuing to be a developing situation here as we've been talking about
00:33the fires across the west. One of several fires here in Colorado, you see the smoke plume. This
00:38is off to about eight to nine miles off to my west here. I'm in west Loveland. What you're
00:43looking at here is Lake Loveland, and this is the view you're seeing all the smoke. And you
00:47notice the direction all that smoke blowing to the south and east. You saw the video last night
00:52from my house. A lot of those drainage winds overnight. You see the mountain areas, the higher
00:57elevations cool quicker, and we get a lot of wind that comes off the mountains, blew that smoke
01:01into the valley. So folks in Greeley, Milliken, Johnstown waking up to a lot of smoke this morning.
01:06But this fire really blew up yesterday, as we mentioned, just 800 acres in just a matter of
01:12a few hours. We'll show you some of that video from yesterday here as we run the latest numbers.
01:16These coming in about seven o'clock this morning, 992 acres. It was the last official measurement
01:23that about seven o'clock here. We did have a little bit of movement in the fire last night.
01:27Some of that creeping again just downhill, but no major runs. We have not heard of any
01:31structures burned to this point. So that is some good news. We are expecting aerial assaults to
01:35continue on that fire yesterday. They had four helicopters making runs between many area
01:41reservoirs, picking up water and then running it out to the fire and dumping it on that.
01:45That in addition to one large air tanker that was making runs back and forth throughout the day
01:50yesterday. US 34 remains closed today. So folks that are visiting from out of town, if you're
01:56looking to get up to Estes Park or Rocky Mountain National Park, you are going to need to take US 36.
02:02Usually not a big deal for folks coming out of the Denver area. That is the way to go. But if
02:06you're coming in from, say, Cheyenne or someplace in Nebraska on I-76 where you would get off to
02:11take 34, you will have to take 36 if you do want to get around this fire. But US 34 remaining
02:17closed. They do have evacuations in the areas near Drake out to the dam store. The locals will know
02:22that is that's basically on the way up to Estes Park. And we are continuing to see those evacuations
02:27remaining in place. Fortunately, folks in Loveland proper likely not going to be seeing any threat
02:32from this. The air quality is going to be the biggest concern for folks east of the front range.
02:36Again, as I mentioned, some of those cities, Greeley, Bertha, Johnstown, Millican, you're going to be
02:40dealing with some of the smoke off and on through the day. And unfortunately, not going to get much
02:43help from the weather. We're seeing a little bit of the gusty winds and temperatures expected to
02:47reach triple digits along the front range. That likely to continue through the week. So this
02:51likely going to be hanging around for a couple of days there, guys. Acura, the meteorologist,
02:56storm chaser, now traffic reporter Tony Laubach giving us all the details for this morning. We
03:01appreciate you being out there and bringing us the latest from Colorado.