Wildland firefighters say things are ‘basically as dry as they can get’ in Colorado’s forests — fueling ‘schizophrenic’ wildfire behavior

Wildland firefighters say things are ‘basically as dry as they can get’ in Colorado’s forests — fueling ‘schizophrenic’ wildfire behavior

A historic drought is turning Colorado’s mountain landscapes into a tinderbox. After last winter’s record-low snowpack, wildland firefighters who continuously monitor indexes of weather and climate data to help predict wildfire risk and how conditions might affect fire behavior say they’re staring down unprecedented levels of dryness. “That lack of snowpack has had a very real impact on the fuels, the vegetation — specifically the large logs tha…