The Lee Fire has burned over 133,000 acres in northwest Colorado as of August 15. It’s the second-largest wildfire currently burning in the country, and it’s the fifth-largest in state history.
The fire started on August 2, due to a lightning strike. Since it started, firefighters have characterized its behavior as extreme and anomalous, and say it poses unique challenges to fire crews.
On Colorado State Highway 13, south of Meeker and north of Rifle, the sky is a brown-orange color, the air is thick with smoke, and ash occasionally falls from the sky. The entire hillside, usually awash in sagebrush and pinyon-juniper trees, is scorched black, with white spots of ash. In the distance, we can see flames running up the hillside.
“The conditions in the fire behavior we're getting out of this one are pretty extreme and pretty out of the ordinary for what we're used to in this type,” says Tyler Nathe.
Nathe is a section operations chief for the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 3. It’s a federal team that gets called in, usually to assist with wildfires that have grown beyond the ability of local crews to handle on their own. Nathe says the vegetation out here is historically dry, and doesn't usually burn for this long.
“Usually they're fairly dependent on wind, for the most part, and they'll run real fast and then the wind dies down and the fire will lay down,” he says.
The problem is that the wind hasn’t really died down at all. The area hasn’t had a break from red flag warnings, with low relative humidity, high winds, and hot temperatures. This part of Colorado is also in exceptional drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
“There are parts of this valley that have not received measurable rain in the last month,” said Bruno Rodriguez, a National Weather Service meteorologist assigned to the Lee Fire. “That speaks to how quickly this drought has accelerated.”
He spoke during a community meeting in Rifle on August 14 about some of the conditions driving the fire, and the smoke that’s been impacting much of the region.
“The most recent red flag warnings have been driven primarily by hot, dry breezy conditions as well as an unstable environment,” he said. “Anytime we have an unstable environment, there are a few things that we can see: deeper plumes that are more visible to the public, as well as more erratic surface conditions.”
In many ways, it’s a perfect storm for wildfire. But it could also very much be the new normal, thanks to human-caused climate change, says Laura Dee, an ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“Certainly this year on the Western Slope, the lack of monsoon season (rains) has played a big role and it's also bringing higher winds, some lightning,” she said. “With that, mixed with the lack of snow pack and hotter average temperatures, these types of fires were inevitable, really.”
Dee studies climate change as a part of her job, and is one of the lead scientists at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center.
She says a big aspect of climate change impact is that it creates more variability in weather systems. For example, in 2024, precipitation and runoff in Colorado were much closer to normal, leading to a lot of plant growth. Now, in the midst of drought a year later, that vegetation has dried out, putting ecosystems that shouldn’t normally be so vulnerable to fire at risk.
“A lot of the forests and sage brush ecosystems in Colorado are actually fire-adapted, which means they need some fire to stay healthy,” she said. “But now with climate change, we're really pushing these systems outside of what they've historically experienced.”
This part of Garfield and Rio Blanco counties should be fire-adapted, due to their sagebrush and pinyon-juniper woodland characteristics. But as Tyler Nathe points out, things have really built up. He says these ecosystems don’t usually burn for this long, the way a larger timber forest might.
“This area hasn't seen fire in a long time so there's a lot of stuff that's available and the fuels are super continuous because of that,” he says.
Nathe has been a firefighter for 22 years. He says even now, he and his team are learning from the challenges presented by the Lee Fire.
“We… didn't expect it to be able to do what it did that one day with the 30,000 acres, in this type of fuel model and the conditions that we had,” Nathe says. “So that was an interesting step back, like, ‘okay, that can, that can happen.’ We got surprised.”
Nathe says firefighters are prepared for a longer fire season, stretching into the fall.
Federal forecasts are predicting below normal chance of regular precipitation, as well as higher temperatures over the next three months.
Fire officials are expecting some moderating conditions to come in the form of higher humidity and maybe even some rain over the coming days.
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
