As many of you know, I am part of a group of people who report precipitation amounts daily to Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) organization, and those reports from all over the U.S. and parts of Canada are fed into various national data bases where scientists analyze the information.  The coordinator for the program is Nolan Doeskin, at the University of Colorado.  He sends frequent newsletters to all of us "reporters" and we have come to feel we know him as a friend.  I was relieved this morning to receive news from him.  I'm sharing some of it here:

Dear CoCoRaHS participants + friends and family

Many of you have written this week as news of our Colorado catastrophic 
wildfires spreads.  Thanks so much for your caring thoughts and 
prayers.  Here is an update.

Wildfire roared into parts of Colorado Springs yesterday afternoon 
(about 100 miles south of here) and the CoCoRaHS family has once again 
been directly affected.  Comparing the CoCoRaHS maps for El Paso County, 
Colorado from yesterday to today, areas of the map north and west from 
Colorado Springs have gone blank.  We have seen this before -- with the 
2011 tornadoes and floods and also with fire.  When the rainfall maps go 
blank we know people are hurting. That hits home for all of us.  Over 
32,000 area residents in and near Colorado Springs have had to flee the 
fires, and plenty more have done so voluntarily.  It is likely that some 
of our volunteers may have lost homes.  Last night, Boulder Colorado was 
threatened. Today more fires have ignited.  This has been an incredible 
nightmare.  Some of you have experienced this at other times and in other 
places.

Here around Fort Collins our huge (nearly 90,000 acres) wild fire has 
settled down a bit.  It is still burning but now it is higher in the 
mountains and threatening fewer homes.  Still, hundreds of families 
remain evacuated.  The Larimer County maps continue to show large blank 
areas where observers once reported -- just 3 weeks ago.  These are 
indeed terrible disasters  -- similar to Texas wildfires last year and 
other fires this year and previously.  With persisting heat and drought 
(parts of Colorado saw temperatures of 110 or higher for the 4-5th day 
in a row.) we are not out of the woods.  But for our family (back from 
our Upper Michigan vacation), we are safe, our home and animals are 
fine, and the worst inconvenience has been the periods of smoke, intense 
heat and lots of ash in my rain gauge.

Two nights ago I experienced something that is still giving me goose 
bumps.  I worked late and drove home about sunset.  To get to and from 
work I have to drive past the Incident Command post for our fire (called 
the "High Park fire").  It's just down the road from our building here 
on the foothills campus of Colorado State University.  As the fire 
spread, firefighting crews increased and the National Guard joined the 
effort.  The Incident Command post grew to become a huge and noisy tent 
city illuminated day and night.  It has been hard to concentrate here 
with all the activity and with episodes of smoke.   Of particular 
interest were the large helicopters shuttling back and forth --  
hovering while reloading fire retardant and then racing off to protect 
nearby homes. Helicopter activity peaked each time the fire approached 
residential areas.  At last things were quieting down as the active fire 
zone moved farther away.  Driving home I passed what used to be a large, 
open pasture but now it was the heliport, the heavy equipment staging 
area, the portable shower and portapotty area, the mess tents and the 
security check point.  Beyond that were tents set up with t-shirt sales, 
refreshments and even portable massage tables to bring some relief to 
tired and sore firefighters.  Then, to my surprise, the road was lined 
with people -- young and old -- holding up signs and cheering 
exuberantly for each truck as it returned from the fire to the camp.  As 
I drove past, dozens of large trucks were coming back to camp  -- 
responding to the cheers by honking and sounding sirens.  It seemed 
surreal -- a slight taste of what it might have been like when our young 
men returning to the U.S. after the end of WW2.  I won't forget this.


The smell of rain -- the glorious rainbow

Today, we were surprised by rain.  We had thought that nature had 
perhaps given up on that part of the hydrologic cycle.  Several showers 
moved in dropping temperatures from the 90s back into the 70s and 
bringing the smell that only fresh rain can bring.  The winds then 
shifted and blew down from the mountains.  Instead of the smell of pines 
-- it was that smell you get when you douse a camp fire with a bucket of 
water.  For miles, the forest smelled of wet ashes.  The National 
Weather Service quickly issued a flash flood warning.  Even though 
rainfall was light, runoff from recently burned slopes can bring down 
ash, mud and much debris.  And then, as the day ended, the sun broke 
through the clouds and there was the brightest, boldest, beautifulest 
rainbow I've ever seen.