Heat and drought are helping spread wildfires in the Four Corners area and across the West. Precipitation in Cortez in the month of July was what longtime local weather observer Jim Andrus calls an abject failure. Just about a third of an inch of rain, which is 28 percent of normal precipitation, fell last month, even though July is typically the start of the monsoon season in the Southwest. In an email, Andrus noted that the monsoon moisture is falling on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. Both Colorado’s Front Range and eastern New Mexico have seen soaking rains and some flash floods. Numerous wildfires, most of them lightning-sparked, are blazing around the West. The Stoner Mesa fire, which is on national forest lands some 20 miles northeast of the town of Dolores, reached 500 acres Wednesday afternoon. The Dolores County Sheriff’s Office has issued an evacuation order for San Juan National Forest lands on Stoner and Taylor mesas. The Waters Canyon wildfire on Ute Mountain Ute tribal land south of the border with Mesa Verde National Park is more than 200 acres in size and is not contained. And the highly destructive Dragon Bravo fire at the Grand Canyon’s North Rim is now over 130,000 acres with 13 percent containment. Montezuma County remains in “moderate drought” status and that is projected to continue.
Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
