Wildfire Today posted more information about the Las Conchas fire on June 29.
===================
Update at 9:10 p.m. MT, June 28, 2011:
This new map of the Las Conchas fire includes satellite data collected at 3:50 p.m. MT on Tuesday. The recorded heat showed comparatively little growth, with some additional acres on the northeast corner and also some on the southwest side.
As expected, the weather on Tuesday was less extreme than on Sunday and Monday, with afternoon winds recorded at the Tower weather station (east of the fire) southwest at 8-18 mph, with gusts at 19-34. The relative humidity bottomed out at 8% with a cloud cover shading the fire for much of the afternoon.
The forecast for Wednesday at Los Alamos is for a high temperature of 87, RH of 14%, and southwest winds increasing throughout the day, from 8-12 mph in the morning to 22 mph by 6 p.m. — suitable weather for significant fire spread, but not as extreme as on Sunday and Monday.
========================
Update at 12:25 p.m. MT, June 28:
At a news conference that started at 12:10 p.m. today, Doug Tucker, the Chief of the Los Alamos Fire Department, said two incident management teams either are or will be managing the fire, and that an Area Command Team has been ordered which will coordinate resources, establish priorities, and supervise the IMTeams. (Note: this was confirmed by New Mexico Fire Information.) The Chief said the fire started near a power line, but the cause and origin are still under investigation.
Tucker said that since the Cerro Grande of 2000, a great deal of vegetation management has been conducted in Los Alamos to make the structures and facilities more fire resistant than 10 years ago when over 280 homes were destroyed or damaged and 40 Los Alamos National Laboratory structures burned. The Chief said the city is now qualified as a “Firewise Community”, which is a remarkable change from 10 years earlier when the structures were extremely vulnerable to wildfire.
Tucker said the numerous barrels of stored radioactive waste at the Laboratory are surrounded by bare mineral soil or asphalt and there little chance that the fire could impinge on the barrels. The operations manager of the Lab said that if a wildfire does approach the radioactive materials they have equipment on site that will cover it with foam, further protecting it from fire.
A live camera is available at Pajarito Mountain ski area.
============================
Update at 10:18 a.m. MT, June 28, 2011:
New Mexico Fire Information has posted more information about the Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos. The size is now 60,740 acres, according to data from an infrared mapping flight at 11:13 p.m. June 27. They have a map of the fire, but the resolution is too poor to determine who produced it.
InciWeb has very outdated information that is at least 24 hours old, far too old for a 60,740-acre fire that is causing evacuations. And they have no downloadable maps or Google Earth fire perimeters posted. Hopefully the incident management team will get organized and provide better information than the Wallow fire teams did during their first week in Arizona.
The Southwest Coordination Center has posted information about the impacts of the smoke from the Las Conchas and Pacheco fires.
============================
Updated at 9:05 a.m. MT, June 28, 2011
The Las Conchas fire, pushed by strong winds, burned closer to the city of Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory on Monday and Monday night. The fire crossed Highway 4 and continued for almost 5 miles north of the highway on the west side of the city of Los Alamos. It crossed to the west side of the East Fork of the Jemez River.
At 11:00 p.m. Monday night the fire was approximately 3.5 miles west of White Rock and 2 miles west of the city of Los Alamos. At that time it had not made any substantial incursion into the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where research is conducted on nuclear materials.
The incident management team has mapped the fire at 57,200 acres, an increase of 13,603 over the last size officially reported Monday on InciWeb. The fire is actually several thousand acres larger than that since their acreage was based on a fire perimeter smaller on the north side of the fire than the maps you will see below.
Strong variable west and south winds gusting up to 37 mph pushed the fire on Monday afternoon, but the winds calmed quite a bit during the night. The forecast for Los Alamos on Tuesday calls for 15-18 mph winds out of the southwest, which will continue to pose a threat to the Los Alamos city and Laboratory. The humidity will bottom out in the low teens with a cloud cover of 20-50%. This weather forecast is more moderate than the conditions on Sunday and Monday, but it could still lead to significant fire spread.
From InciWeb:
Evacuations: The city of Los Alamos is under MANDATORY evacuation as of 1:45 pm. White Rock remains under VOLUNTARY evacuation. Cochiti Mesa, Las Conchas, Bandelier National Monument, and campgrounds near the fire were evacuated yesterday. There were approximately 100 residents evacuated from Cochiti Mesa and Las Conchas, and no evacuees reported to the evacuation center at La Cueva Fire Station.
We will update this article as events unfold on Tuesday, so check back with us.
Below are more detailed maps of the Las Conchas fire.
