Above: Fawn Fire in Yellowstone National Park, August 6, 2016. NPS photo.
Originally published at 5:23 p.m. MDT August 11, 2016.
There are five wildfires currently active in northwest Wyoming.
The Babaganoush Fire has been renamed the Twin Lakes Fire, we assume because no one could pronounce or spell the name. It was reported on August 8 but has been very active over the last 24 hours growing to about 1,400 acres 35 miles southwest of Meeteetse. A Type 2 incident management team has been ordered.
The Hunter Peak Fire was reported on August 9 about 16 miles southeast of the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park, three miles south of the intersection of US Highway 212 and the Chief Joseph Highway. It has burned about 1,700 acres and required some evacuations; 95 structures are threatened. Todd Pechota’s Type 1 Incident Management Team assumed command of the fire at 6 a.m. Thursday.
The Whit Fire 13 miles west of Cody been burning for nine days and did not increase in size on Wednesday. It has blackened over 12,000 acres and still has quite a bit of heat in the southwest portion. (Our previous article about the Whit Fire.)
There are two fires in Yellowstone National Park. The Fawn Fire is in the backcountry in the northwest section of the park 10 miles west of Mammoth and the north entrance. This 930-acre fire is being monitored from the air and was quite active Wednesday.
The other fire in the park is the Maple Fire which has burned about 100 acres 8 miles northeast of the community of West Yellowstone. It also was active Wednesday evening in a large expanse of the scar left by the 1988 North Fork Fire. It will be managed under a monitoring and point-protection strategy providing fire managers a unique opportunity to study current fire behavior in the 1988 fire scar.
