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Dry lightning leads to at least three small fires in Durango area

Heat warped Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad tracks Monday

While Durango may not have set a new temperature record for Tuesday, it did tie one, coming in at 94 degrees and equaling a record set in 2012.

“That’s more than 10 degrees above normal,” said Matthew Aleksa, a meteorologist with the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service about the average temperature for the day of 83 degrees. “Records were set at a number of sites.”

The mercury hit 104 degrees in Grand Junction on Tuesday, surpassing last year’s record of 101 degrees, he said.

Tuesday was the third day in a row Durango reached record temperatures. The high of 96 degrees on Monday set a new record for that date, besting the 2007 record by 4 degrees, and Sunday’s high of 94 degrees topped the record of 93 degrees set in 2006.

The weather forecast for the rest of the week continues to be more of the same, with highs hovering around 90 degrees and lows in the 50s until at least Tuesday.

The relentless heat Monday warped the tracks of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad near Hermosa and delayed evening trains by several hours. Passengers were bused to town, arriving at about 8:20 p.m.

“Everything was on schedule, and everything was back to normal today,” said Christian Robbins, director of marketing for the railroad, on Tuesday afternoon, after a crew tackled the problem area at 6:30 a.m. “The rails expanded all along the track, just a small fraction, but it’s a system, and it was looking for a weak point.”

The place where the warping, also called a sun kink, occurred was not random, he said.

“We happened to be doing repair work there, as we are constantly doing somewhere, not just to keep the ride safe but to make it more comfortable,” Robbins said. “It was a rough spot, and we took up the whole bed and redid it.”

The repairs were not complete, he said.

“This was a bit of a perfect storm,” Robbins said, “It’s hot, but not Phoenix hot. It’s still relatively cool at night, and that heating and cooling is part of it. It’s not so hot, but it’s hot enough with the repair that it caused the issue.”

People might need to get used to other infrastructure elements being affected by higher temperatures because of climate change, Robbins said.

“Power lines, highways, oil and gas rigs, if average temperatures are going up 3 to 9 degrees, it will put pressure on the infrastructure,” he said. “We’re just a very visible illustration of what can happen to other infrastructure.”

The heat also meant some passengers at the Durango-La Plata County Airport were bumped from flights to lighten the load so planes could take off.

Fire danger high

The Durango Fire Protection District issued a no-burn order for Tuesday because of high fire danger caused by dry conditions and a forecast for increasing winds and dry thunderstorms.

Earlier Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for high fire danger in the San Juan Mountain region, including Durango, Telluride and Pagosa Springs. A weak cold front moved into Southwest Colorado on Tuesday afternoon, causing winds to increase. Isolated thunderstorms over the mountains were expected to produce little rain, increasing the chance of fire starts from lightning.

Fire Marshal Karola Hanks said whenever the weather service issues a red flag warning, the fire district issues a no-burn order and red flag for the entire day, not just for a certain part of the day.

“Weather forecasting is getting better, but it’s not perfect, and you never know exactly when conditions might change,” she said.

As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, Los Pinos Fire Protection District had been called out to two lightning-strike fires, but neither was threatening structures, and some rain had fallen in the areas where the fires started. By 8:30 p.m., at least one was extinguished.

At 8 p.m., Upper Pine Fire Protection District was called to a tree on fire from a lightning strike near Gem Village.

And Durango Fire responded to two lightning-strike fires Tuesday evening southwest of Weaselskin Bridge on County Road 213 (La Posta Road) and may be on private land, Hanks said.

“Our Type 3 brush fire team has a line around one,” she said just after 9 p.m., “and the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) Type 6 team has a line around the other. This is why we have held our wildland fire crews in district instead of sending them to other fires in the area because it makes the initial attack possible really quickly.”

After a stretch of days with no rain and then back-to-back days of record-setting high temperatures in Durango, fire danger is high. On Friday, a controlled burn on private land got out of control and threatened nearby homes. No structures burned, but the fire, which burned 30 acres, was not 100 percent contained until Sunday evening.

“We haven’t decided about calling a red flag day for tomorrow (Wednesday),” Aleksa said. “It’s a matter of dry lightning versus more rain-producing storms, which should come in Wednesday.”

abutler@durangoherald.com

Jun 19, 2017
Warm weather likely cause of Durango & Silverton train derailment
Jun 20, 2016
More record-breaking heat forecast for Durango


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