CONIFER — Howling winds across the metro area Tuesday snapped power lines, drove a wildfire that prompted hundreds of people to evacuate in Conifer, knocked down trees in Boulder County and tore the roof from a home in Loveland.
“You can’t take any chances with this kind of wind,” said Bruce Heimer, a Conifer Meadows subdivision resident who took shelter with other people and their pets at the local high school, where students yelled in the parking lot to hear one another over the roaring gusts in the swaying trees as classes were dismissed.
Winds topped 80 mph near Berthoud, Longmont, Loveland and Boulder, and a high-wind warning of 60-mph gusts remained in effect for other parts of Colorado into the evening, according to the National Weather Service.
Winds are expected to calm down in the metro area today, with breezes at 6 to 10 mph in Denver, as temperatures climb into the mid-60s. The region has a 10 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon, according to the Weather Service.
Warm, dry conditions, lightning and high winds, combined with dead grass and brush from the winter, are prime contributors to Colorado’s sometimes explosive spring wildfire season, officials warn each year in early May.
The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said Tuesday that although southern Colorado saw heavy snow this year, the northern half of the West is dry and vulnerable to flames, posing a risk for more fires than usual before late-summer rains arrive.
“After good moisture last year that inhibited wildfires over most of the country, 2010 might see a spike in activity — particularly in the northern half of the West,” agency official Robyn Hefferman said in a statement.
In Jefferson County on Tuesday, flames erupted near U.S. 285 and Foxton Road in the early afternoon, prompting the emergency phone notification system to call 340 homes.
Fire officials and residents speculated that downed power lines sparked the fire, which danced with the wind in the treetops.
Costas Lagos, a division manager for Intermountain Rural Electric Association, said there were a number of power lines down in the Conifer area, and crews were busy trying to restore power Tuesday.
Lagos said he did not know for certain whether any of the downed lines sparked the fire.
When the winds began to calm about 3:30 p.m., fire crews began to contain the blaze at about 12 acres, and by evening the fire was out.
While homes were threatened, prompting the evacuation, none was burned.
Vickie Lytle, a Conifer-area resident for 25 years, had been on standby during the Hayman fire in 2002. She heeded the voluntary evacuation when the fire spread quickly, “racing up trees,” she said, about a mile from her home.
“It was time to go,” she said.
She wasn’t the only one familiar in her concern.
“The worry is the worst part,” said Sally Ericson, who walked her two Labrador retrievers around the perimeter of the school campus. “If I keep moving after these two, I don’t think about whether it’s getting close to my house.”
A second wildfire was reported near Evergreen on Upper Bear Creek Road after 1 p.m., forcing the evacuation of three homes, but it was quickly controlled.
The wind also took the roof off an unoccupied home on Ponderosa Drive in Loveland about 11 a.m. Tuesday.
Wind toppled a large cottonwood tree onto the Boulder Creek Path in Boulder, near the Chief Niwot statue. Crews used cranes to lift a maple tree from a house near the intersection of Sixth Street and Maxwell Avenue.
Denver Post staff writers Howard Pankratz and Kieran Nicholson and the Daily Camera contributed to this report.
