00:00Let's go to Colorado. Look at this. Fast-moving Aspen Acres Fire. The fast-moving Aspen Acres Fire is growing
00:07and now burning nearly 48,000 acres.
00:09At least 150 structures have been destroyed with the fire at 0% containment here. Nasty stuff. This is one
00:16of the fires that's been trending the most this week.
00:19And wildfire risks still remain significant here across much of the southwest over the next few days, Friday and Saturday.
00:25Southern parts of Utah, southeast Nevada, northern parts of the state of Arizona, a little bit of northwestern New Mexico,
00:33southwestern Colorado in our high-risk area.
00:36Dry and windy. Another disturbance moving through.
00:38Now, next week we're going to have less wind, but there's another forecast concern I'm going to tell you about
00:43involving sinking air, and that's going to be a problem.
00:46Here are some of the larger, ongoing, low-containment wildfires in Utah and into Colorado.
00:53Now, Denver up this way, so far most of the action has been generally away from the big city of
00:59Denver and generally south of Salt Lake City.
01:01But along I-15 and now near the I-25 area there, Aspen Acres Fire kind of knocking on the
01:08door of that region not far from Pueblo, Colorado.
01:11But the Snyder Fire, basically multiple different fires that kind of converged and joined into one that became named the
01:19Snyder Fire,
01:19was responsible for the deaths of three firefighters over the weekend, very sadly, there near the Utah-Colorado border.
01:26And that was due to a burn-over incident.
01:30They were basically trapped as the fire overtook their area.
01:33Five were involved in that.
01:35Two were injured, but three fatalities among firefighters there.
01:38Well, future smoke here into Friday morning and through the overnight.
01:42The black smoke areas, that's where we have dense smoke, very thick smoke.
01:45And then the lighter shades where it becomes more diffuse and kind of swept into the northern plains through Saturday.
01:50So that's kind of the ventilation of the smoke from the Four Corners region where the fires have been located.
01:56And the smoke being pooled rapidly into the northern plains, leading to poor air quality for some.
02:02Friday, there's not a whole lot of wind, but there's enough wind to lead to more fire danger here.
02:07Very dry, very dry across the Four Corners region.
02:09Temperatures have actually been a little bit down compared to the norm, but they're beginning to ramp back up.
02:14And we're getting hotter again at the end of the week here.
02:16Amarillo, 96.
02:18Garden City, 102.
02:19Really hot there, but in areas like Flagstaff, 84.
02:22Phoenix back up to 107.
02:24You're trending up for sure.
02:25Vegas back up to 103.
02:26And it's very dry.
02:28Grand Junction, 94, with full sunshine in that area near the wildfires in western Colorado and into eastern Utah.
02:35Saturday, pleasant weather, but we're dry.
02:38We'd love to see some more rain.
02:40Overall, though, into next week, there will be a large zone of high pressure aloft that settles into this area.
02:46This is a change from where we've been this past week.
02:49Five, six, seven days ago, we had a lot of wind leading to fire danger.
02:53And there was a trough across the west.
02:55Remember, it brought in cooler air.
02:56And there was initially some rain in the northwest tied to that.
02:59This is the opposite.
03:00This is a giant area of high pressure.
03:03On the positive, it's going to lead to less wind.
03:06So there will be probably a little less fire activity.
03:09And the increase in acreage burnt per day will be less.
03:12However, it's going to also trap the smoke and haze near the ground.
03:15So we're going to have awful air quality for several days.
03:18Here's future radar.
03:19Just keep your eye on the western half of Colorado and much of central and southern Utah.
03:23And we're going through Sunday into Monday.
03:26There will be some scattered storms in the high plains, isolated storms over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
03:30But unfortunately, most of these areas in the next six to seven days will not see any meaningful rain.
03:37Northern Arizona, southern Utah, far western Colorado probably staying dry.
03:41On the other hand, in the east, we get the payoff as the ridge builds in the west.
03:46The trough returns to the Great Lakes will trend cooler.
03:49The heat wave will be ending.
03:50Later this month, we're going to be looking to the increase of monsoon moisture.
03:55That will eventually help.
03:56But that's not really until the second half of July.
