Jeremy Sparig, Colorado Sun | Zuma Press
Burnt grasses and smoke from the Marshall Fire as seen from from McCaslin Boulevard, Superior, CO. Thursday, December 30, 2021.
A curtain of gray smoke covers a mostly empty parking lot before the camera pans to show a line of fire whipping in the distance.
“You need to go,” says someone off camera, which turns to reveal the interior of a Chuck E Cheese in Superior, Colorado. Children and parents walk briskly—some run—to the exit amid the arcade games and ticket counter, then force the door open against the strong winds fueling the encroaching grass fire that would soon reach the surrounding shopping center.
The apocalyptic footage captured the confluence of strong winds, dense prairie grass and dry conditions that led to Colorado’s most devastating fire ever in terms of structures burned—991 homes and businesses.
Though the origins of the Marshall Fire that started last Thursday remain unknown, the wildfire moved with unprecedented speed through Superior and Louisville on a day in December—not exactly the season for this type of disaster.
“With what’s going on with the climate…you really can’t let your guard down,” says Terrance Gallegos, Santa Fe National Forest’s deputy fire staff officer. The climate crisis has fueled a longer and more intense fire season across the West.
Three hundred miles south of the Superior Chuck E Cheese, Santa Fe’s surrounding area doesn’t look too different from the prairie grasslands that surrounded those Colorado communities.
Gallegos says that in areas around the city that resemble the continuous, dense grass around Superior, a similar event is possible.
“Where there is that continuity, and given the lack of precipitation we’ve had this winter,” Gallegos tells SFR, “It could very easily happen.”
While there are similarities, the landscape surrounding Santa Fe differs in several, important ways from the prairie-like conditions in Colorado. Gallegos notes the pinyon-juniper habitat and shorter grasses, which are kept in check through grazing. Of the dense pinyon-juniper found around the edges of Santa Fe, Gallegos says, “Although that stuff doesn’t burn [intensely], very often, it has the potential to do that.”
The amount of human-nature interaction that occurs in and around the city, Gallegos explains, heightens the potential for a fire event.
“It would just take, you know, one careless start to occur on a day in the winter time, where you have those cold front winds,” says Gallegos.
The winds that fanned the flames in Colorado last Thursday differ from the gusts that make Santa Fe notably blustery, says Scott Overpeck, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque.
Santa Fe recorded wind speeds as high as 70 mph during a mid-December winter storm last year; up in Taos those winds reached as high as 100 mph. Similar wind speeds were observed on the day of the blaze in Colorado.
The towns of Superior and Louisville, east of the Rocky Mountains, are on the receiving end of strong winds because “on the east slopes of these mountain chains, winds come down, they descend, and they can accelerate,” says Overpeck.
Winds coming through Santa Fe can originate from the northwest, off the Jemez Mountains, or from the southwest, channeling through the Rio Grande Valley, Overpeck explains. He adds that the direction of the gusts determines how wind is accelerated—and how strongly it moves through the area.
Overpeck anticipates more winter storm events, but pinpointing the arrival and severity of those events is a tricky business. Given the current pattern of below-normal precipitation and above-normal temperatures, says Overpeck, “you kind of have to pay attention to the forecast and prepare accordingly.”
Practically all of Santa Fe County remains in extreme drought, and with that, winter “storms can bring strong west or southwest winds and low humidity that could cause an existing fire—especially in grass—to spread rapidly,” writes Chuck Maxwell, predictive services meteorologist for the USDA Forest Service, in an email.
Maxwell notes the differences in terrain between Santa Fe and where the recent Colorado fire took place, but adds, “Grasses are almost always available to burn in the winter, given wind and an ignition source, and those types of fires ‘love’ flat terrain and open fields.”
The increasing threat of these events could be particularly impactful on residents living in the “wildland-urban interface,” says Gallegos, referring to the edges of the city where houses border nature. He acknowledges the fire season is expanding and advises everyone to take steps to “fire-harden” their property and prepare for wildfire emergencies.
“That one wind event that could come down, knock a power line down and grab onto those dry fields and make a hard run,” Gallegos warns. “It’s not unprecedented. We’re starting to see it more and more.”
