Fire Under Snow: What the Fern Lake Fire May Be Telling Us About Climate Change
Channel: christi turner
Date: 2013-12-19

The Fern Lake fire in Rocky Mountain National Park ignited on October 9, 2012, long after the "fire season" should have ended along Colorado's Front Range.  
 
But it didn't stop there: smoldering under the snow in an area of the park called Forest Canyon - which had not seen wildfire in more than 800 years - the fire flared up on December 1, 2012, and with high winds and record drought, the fire doubled in size overnight.  Nearby residential areas were evacuated, and local firefighters turned the blaze over to a national Hot Shot crew.  Eventually the fire was brought under control, but it continued to burn and smolder under the snow for months, clear into the next fire "season."  
 
The Fern Lake fire was not officially declared out until June 25, 2013.  It burned for nearly 9 months.
 
No homes were destroyed and only 3,500 acres of the park burned - a small fire in comparison with giants like the High Park, Waldo Canyon and Four Mile Canyon fires.  But it wasn't the size as much as the timing that matters:  the Fern Lake fire was a smoldering and unnerving warning - at the tail end of Colorado's most destructive year for wildfire on record - of how drought, rising temperatures and other aspects of a changing climate may be affecting the future of fire in Colorado and across the American West.

Produced and directed by Christi Turner and Emilie Bierschenk.

see the full website here: http://lilturns.wix.com/fern-lake-fire