Alexander Mountain Fire ignites in Colorado
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.