Wyoming officials are calling a 118-square-mile fire charging through the Bighorn National Forest “unprecedented.”
“When I say we are facing unprecedented fire conditions, this doesn’t feel like a normal October here in our community,” he said. “It’s hotter, it’s drier, and the relative humidity is lower.”
Johnson said extreme wind has only exacerbated conditions.
“The fire is behaving like a teenager,” he said. “It lays down and sleeps during the day and gets unruly at night, and that’s not good.”
In the past 100 years, the largest fire the Bighorn National Forest has seen consumed 18,000 acres, Johnson said. That’s about 28 square miles.
“It probably took a month and a half to get to that size,” Johnson said. “This fire grew 25,000 acres in a matter of hours, so we are really dealing with difficult conditions.”
He added that the firefighters are finally feeling as if they are on the offense with the weather calming down.
“We are taking actions that are designed to protect the critical values at risk that we’ve identified,” he said. “Those are first and foremost, human lives and all of your property, our property, our backyard, and our drinking water.”
In its update, the U.S. Forest Service said the perimeter of the fire is 225 miles, “with 34 of those miles containing fire lines.”
“Overnight, the fire crossed the Big Goose River on the southern end of the fire,” the U.S. Forest Service said. “The night crew was ready and anticipating this forward progression. They completed firing operations to introduce low-intensity fire on the landscape to reduce the fuel load before the active fire got there. The day shift will continue to work in this area, patrolling and mopping up residual hotspots.”
The Forest Service added that a cold front is bringing in more humidity as the wind direction shifts.
But the humidity isn’t expected to help, and the wind is likely to “increase fire activity and smoke production,” the Forest Service said.
