Snow extinguishes wildfires in Colorado

the Fires destroyed entire neighborhoods in Colorado, in the western United States, was extinguished on Friday as snow quenched the last embers.

at least 500 homes have been converted to smoke Tens of thousands of people have had to flee, but at the moment there is no record of the deaths, a “miracle,” according to Governor Jared Polis.

the The damage is greatAerial images show entire streets reduced to ash. Unlike other fires, these fires were not limited to rural areas but reached the suburbs.

“Families only had a few minutes to put everything they could – the animals and their children – into the car and set off,” Polis said at a news conference on Friday. It happened “in the blink of an eye”.

In the evening The flames stained the sky orange, fueled by gusts of winds up to 160 km / h. It appears that the cause of the fire was the fall of electric poles on barren soil.

It is not yet known how many homes were destroyed. Boulder County Sheriff Joe Bailey put the number at more than 500 on Friday, saying he “would not be surprised if there were more than a thousand.”

The fire spread “into the mosaic” so that Some neighborhoods were saved while nearby houses were burnedIt is to explain.

“When you see the destruction, it’s surprising that we don’t have a list of 100 missing people, but we don’t,” Sharif said.

In contact with Governor Polis, President of the United States Joe Biden promised that “every effort is possible to help immediately to affected persons and residents,” according to the White House.

Nevada

Friday cSnow covered Enizas. The US Weather Service (NWS) has placed part of this mountainous state on a winter storm warning and is forecasting snow in the coming days.

This snow would “help us”, Bailey said, who doubts the fire will spread again.

the Local authorities lifted some eviction orders for the night. But access to cities like Superior, which has a population of 13,000, is still prohibited.

Patrick Kilbride, 72, was working when he received the eviction order. He could only salvage his car and the clothes he was wearing, and the rest, the house he lived in for three decades, had been reduced to “ashes,” as he himself told the Denver Post.

Historic drought

Much like the American West, The arid state of Colorado has suffered from drought for years Exceptional.

With global warming, the intensity and frequency of droughts and heat waves are likely to increase, creating conditions that lead to wildfires.

In recent years, eThe American West has suffered from unprecedented firesEspecially in California and Oregon.

For Daniel Swain, a meteorologist at the University of California, “it’s hard to believe” that these fires happened in December. “But take an autumn of record heat and drought, with only an inch of snow so far this season, and add a storm with a blizzard … and the result will be very dangerous fires that are moving very fast,” the researcher wrote on Twitter.

behind the fires Recently, the United States has experienced other extreme events, such as the passage of Storm Ida in New York and New Jersey in September and the killer hurricanes in December in Kentucky. At the moment, it is not known whether the latter is related to global warming.

AMP