Lightning strikes along with hot,dry temperatures have helped stoke multiple wildfires across Colorado this weekend.
Lightning sparked a one-acre wildfire at Mt. Falcon Park near Morrison on Saturday afternoon. Helicopter drops had saturated the fire and Mt. Falcon Park reopened Sunday morning, according to Denver’s Channel 9 News.
Lightning also sparked the 25-acre Oil Springs Fire, 20 miles south of Rangely, and crews on Saturday were struggling to contain the blaze, Channel 9 said. The five-acre Smith Gulch Fire, northeast of DeBeque, is the largest of the multiple possibly lightning-sparked first along the Interstate 70 corridor on the Western Slope, the television station reported.
Crews on Sunday were continuing to fight the North Cinder Butte Areas Fires on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, south of Durango. In all, 18 fires broke out on the reservation on Friday, Channel 9 said.
