By The Lookout
Recorded: July 2, 2026 – Morning Livestream
Hot, dry, windy weather is driving rapid growth on multiple fires across Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, with limited safe options for direct attack. Some blazes appear to be burning through areas that have recently been “treated” for fuels reduction, but remain highly flammable, due to residual logging slash. From Beulah Valley and the Gold Mountain Fires in Colorado to Utah’s Babylon and Arizona’s Pocket Fire, the next few days look critical until a possible pattern shift and increased chances of rain early next week.
Based on the latest livestream, here is an AI-generated fire‑by‑fire overview (reviewed by Zeke).
Beulah Valley / Aspen Acres & Gold Mountain Area (Colorado)
In southern Colorado, the Beulah Valley / Aspen Acres area continues to see active fire behavior, but new mapping brings one important piece of good news: the core of Beulah Valley remains largely unburned. Last night’s infrared mapping, collected around 1 a.m., shows the main “gut” of the fire has not pushed into central Beulah Valley. The Beulah School, the small downtown core, and neighborhoods on the north side of County Road 78 still appear to be outside the main body of the fire.
That does not mean the situation in the Valley is resolved. Yesterday the fire made a strong run along the north side of the valley, pushing through the North Creek Road area. Since last night, the fire has continued to press outward on its northwest and west flanks, edging toward Owl Canyon. While the southern edge showed limited change overnight, it experienced substantial growth yesterday between the morning mapping and last night’s flight.
The fire behavior forecast is sobering. Today is expected to be hotter and significantly drier than yesterday, with southeast winds pushing the fire generally toward the northwest and north. Peak afternoon winds around 13 miles per hour are not extreme by themselves, but in combination with very low humidity they are sufficient to support continued active spread, especially on exposed slopes and ridgelines. A pattern change is anticipated over the weekend as winds shift easterly, which could blow the fire back toward the west, while precipitation chances rise above 25 percent beginning Sunday. That potential relief, however, is still several critical days away, given the fire‑conducive weather expected over the next 48 hours.
Willow Fire (Near Leadville, Colorado)
Near Leadville, the Willow Fire continues to burn stubbornly in steep, high‑elevation timber around 11,500 feet, exhibiting frequent spotting and offering very few safe opportunities for direct attack. Mapping from consecutive nights shows many spot fires that have established themselves outside the main footprint. This pattern of frequent mid‑range spotting in dense timber is a textbook example of what firefighters refer to as “problem fire behavior.”
The challenge is straightforward. Even if crews were to cut a line along the visible edge of the fire, numerous spot fires may already be burning a quarter to half a mile away, often below them or out of sight. When those spots flare up, they can overrun lines, trap crews, or simply erase days of work. Ridgelines, which usually offer the safest and most effective places to anchor firelines, are already compromised in several places, as the fire has spotted onto and over them. Building handline in this kind of thick timber without dozers is slow, hazardous work.
Several scenarios could help the fire spread to the north or northwest. As the fire spots down toward the lake, it could make strong uphill runs and build a strong convection column and spot across the water. The lake is only about half a mile wide at critical points, and under today’s conditions, spotting across it is by no means far‑fetched. Current strategy appears to focus on running the fire into rock outcrops, tying lines to roads and trails where possible, and essentially buying time until the weather breaks. With low humidity expected to persist and only a modest chance of precipitation on the horizon next week, the Willow Fire still has significant potential to grow to the NW, and possibly to the south if efforts to corral it at Halfmoon Creek are ineffective.
Gold Mountain Fire (Ouray, Cimarron / Owl Creek Pass – Colorado)
North of Ouray, a large fire burning around Baldy Peak, Owl Creek Pass, Cimarron Ridge, and the headwaters of the West Fork near Silver Jack Reservoir continues to expand, particularly on its northern flanks. The good news is that, for now, the fire is not pushing aggressively down into the US‑550 corridor. As it backs down the slopes, it encounters less continuous fuel, reducing the immediate risk of a fast downhill run into the highway and nearby communities.
However, the northern portion of the fire is running freely to the NE. In the continuous timber and mixed fuels around Courthouse Mountain, Cimarron Ridge, and areas like the locally referenced “Katie’s Meadow,” the fire is doing essentially what it wants. Spotting, rough terrain, and limited access make direct control unsafe on all but the heel and limited portions of the flanks of the fire. The overarching strategy is to wait for the fire to arrive in more favorable country—road systems, trail networks, and ridge tops where crews can get a foothold and potentially conduct firing operations. Indirect control tactics, such as building lines in advance and backburning to remove fuel, are being discussed, but in deep drought and single‑digit humidity, even indirect operations can be exceedingly difficult to hold.
Topographically, the fire will be pushing through Owl Creek Pass and establishing itself into the next drainage, including the West Fork area near Silver Jack Reservoir. Operations maps had originally contemplated holding it along certain ridge systems, such as Spruce Ridge, but current mapping shows the fire already well established over some of those features. That reality significantly complicates any plan to use those ridges as final containment lines. With another stretch of hot, dry, and windy weather on tap and no immediate help from the weather, this fire is likely to continue to advance toward the NE wherever fuels remain unbroken.
Ferris Fire (Colorado) – Fuels Treatments Under Scrutiny
In southwestern Colorado, the Ferris Fire is burning through one of the more heavily treated landscapes in the region, effectively serving as a live‑fire audit of years of fuels reduction projects. An intricate map compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center shows a patchwork of prior fuels treatments and disturbances, each color representing a different intervention. Some areas within the Ferris Fire that have burned in the past were claimed by the Forest Service as ‘natural fuels reduction’. Other areas to the west of the fire have seen mechanical thinning, mastication, and salvage logging projects, some of them as recent as 2024. There have also been some prescribed burns here in the timeframe around 2015.
The Ferris Fire has now burned through many of these treated areas. Field reports from the incident suggest that heavy slash left on the ground after mechanical treatments has posed real problems for control efforts in places. In some mechanically treated pinyon‑juniper units, what the mapping shows simply as “treated” appears on the ground as dense, unburned red slash and downed material that can feed intense fire behavior when dry. That raises uncomfortable but important questions about how we define and evaluate “fuels reduction.”
Complicating matters further is the quality of the data. Treatment polygons often represent planning areas rather than exactly what was completed. A larger area may have been proposed for thinning or mastication, but only part was actually treated before funding or contracting issues intervened. Documentation can lag, staff turnover can interrupt reporting, and in some cases, planned follow‑up burns never happen. The result is a “fog of data” in which maps confidently label an area as treated, but the type, completeness, and effectiveness of that treatment are highly variable.
The Ferris Fire highlights a critical nuance: a fuels treatment is not automatically a fuels reduction. Mastication and thinning that leave large quantities of unburned slash can create fuel beds that burn hotter and more chaotically than expected during wildfires, potentially making control harder rather than easier.
Snyder Fire (Colorado) – A Deadly Demonstration of Limits
The Snyder Fire, which killed three firefighters and injured two more, has begun to show more black line on operational maps, indicating areas now considered contained. Both the heel and much of the head of the fire are described as being in containment status. Yet the way this fire evolved—and ended—underscores the hard limits of suppression under extreme conditions.
One key observation from the analysis is that the Snyder Fire appears to have burned as far as it wanted to burn until it essentially ran out of receptive fuel. While there has been firefighting on this incident and those efforts undoubtedly played a role locally, the broader footprint suggests a fire that largely defined its own perimeter based on weather and fuels. In other words, the fire’s ultimate size and shape may have been similar even if firefighters had not been exposed to the extreme conditions that led to the fatalities.
This dynamic forces a reckoning with what we reasonably can and should demand of firefighters. The 10 Standard Firefighting Orders and the 18 Watch Out Situations were developed in direct response to past tragedies. In an event like Snyder, it is likely that multiple orders were compromised—relating to maintaining continuous knowledge of fire behavior, ensuring adequate safety zones, and keeping communications robust and clear. As climate change drives more extreme fire weather, and fires increasingly resist control even at night, these fundamental safety doctrines take on renewed importance. They remind us that some fire environments simply cannot be safely controlled without accepting risks that may outweigh any potential benefit.
Babylon Fire (Utah)
In Utah, the Babylon Fire continues to spread with relatively little effective containment in largely remote terrain. Mapping from recent nights shows the fire steadily enlarging its footprint. While the incident is not threatening large population centers, it is affecting air quality, habitat, and rangelands, and it draws on regional suppression resources at a time when many other incidents are demanding attention.
This landscape carries a notable fire history. Some interior islands within the current perimeter did not burn this time around because they already burned in 2009 and again in 2019. Those younger fire scars, with reduced fuel loads and altered structure, now act as natural fuelbreaks, slowing or redirecting portions of the current fire. The Babylon Fire illustrates how, at a landscape scale, previous wildfires can become some of the most important controls on where new fires spread and where they decide to stop.
Cottonwood Fire (Utah)
The Cottonwood Fire, which was a major concern roughly a week ago, has quieted considerably. For several days now, the main perimeter has shown little outward expansion. Most of the interior appears cold or in advanced mop‑up, with only a few stubborn pockets of heat remaining.
The most persistent activity has been on the north flank, where fire has been “slopping” into the North Fork of North Creek, and around a small area on the southern end of the fire. Some heat signatures also remain near Birch Creek Mountain. However, the general character of the incident is now subdued, allowing incident management teams to concentrate resources on these localized flares rather than on broad perimeter growth.
Wild Goose Fire (Utah)
Farther north in Utah, near Highway 50 and the community of Scipio, the Wild Goose Fire has generated concern but is, at present, relatively quiet. Recent reports indicate that the fire grew by roughly 46 acres yesterday, a modest amount by current western standards. Heat detections and observed behavior suggest the fire is not making aggressive runs under present conditions.
Pocket Fire (Between Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizona)
The Pocket Fire, burning in rugged country south of Flagstaff, remains active but is now the focus of extensive firing operations. Over the past several operational periods, crews have conducted large burns along the northwest flank of the fire, tying constructed lines into existing road systems and natural topographical breaks.
So far, those fired sections appear to be holding, effectively creating a buffer between the core of the fire and further spread to the west. However, the fire remains free to move in the deeply dissected, roadless interior, where direct access is limited and suppression options are few. Overall, the Pocket Fire is being partially shaped and constrained by intentional firing on accessible edges, while still doing largely what it wants in the remote interior until topography or weather intervenes. Initial review of satellite imagery for the fire shows that the majority of the fire’s area has burned with low-moderate severity – which is not surprising given that much of the northern area of the fire burned in the past 8 years.
Sacatone Fire (Gila Region – New Mexico)
In New Mexico’s Gila region, the Sacatone Fire is burning into a landscape with one of the most extensive and complex fire histories in the American West. Mapping reveals a mosaic of past burns, each represented in a different color, reflecting decades of managed wildfire and prescribed fire. In many parts of the Gila, this pattern of recurring, mostly moderate‑intensity fire has created conditions that are more resilient to large, destructive events. Fuel loads and continuity are disrupted enough that new fires often moderate as they encounter patches that burned in the last decade or two.
At the same time, not every outcome is positive. In some areas, repeated burning or poorly timed fire has helped convert forests and shrublands into grass and invasive species such as cheatgrass, which, in turn, support more frequent, fast‑moving fires. The Sacatone Fire, therefore, is part of a long‑running experiment in managed wildfire: demonstrating where a robust fire history can temper new fire growth, and where it can entrench new, less desirable fire regimes.
Fuels Treatments, Mastication, and Climate Change
Beyond the specifics of each incident, this livestream underscored two interconnected themes: the complexity of fuels treatments, and the profound influence of climate change on fire behavior.
Mastication took center stage as a key example. Video from Northern California showed what the land looked like before and after mastication of 12‑ to 16‑foot manzanita stands with trees pushing up through them. Before treatment, the area was essentially impenetrable brush. After mastication, the vegetation had been converted into a continuous mat of shredded woody debris on the forest floor. When this material was later burned under apparently mild conditions in April, it produced very intense heat, persistent smoldering, and frequent fire whirls along the holding lines. Dozer lines had to be pushed around remaining trees, because experience had shown that burning mastication slash directly under the canopy would likely kill every standing tree through prolonged radiant and convective heating.
This experience underscores a critical point: mastication is not, in itself, a fuels reduction strategy. It is a fuels rearrangement strategy. Without follow‑up burning, removal, or grazing, masticated slash can remain a volatile, long‑lasting fuel bed that burns intensely when ignited during wildfires. The effectiveness and longevity of treatments also vary enormously by site. In moist, productive environments, brush may resprout to four or six feet high just a few years after treatment, quickly narrowing the window of reduced hazard. In drier environments, treatments can remain effective for decades, especially where ongoing grazing or maintenance keeps regrowth in check.
Overlaid on this is the reality of climate change. Seasoned firefighters report that overnight temperatures in many fire‑prone regions are now several degrees warmer than they were in the 1980s and 1990s, and nighttime humidity recovery is significantly poorer. Fires that once reliably “laid down” at night now often continue to make runs after dark. That erodes one of the historic pillars of wildfire suppression: shifting the most aggressive containment efforts to cooler, calmer overnight hours. It also tightens the window in which crews can safely take direct action on fast‑moving flanks.
Taken together, these factors explain much of what we are seeing across Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico this week: fuels that are, in places, rearranged but not reduced; landscapes with patchy and sometimes misleading treatment data; and a warming climate that keeps fires active later into the night and deeper into the season. Until the anticipated pattern change and potential precipitation arrive next week, the fires now burning across the region will, in many cases, continue to “do what they want” wherever fuels are continuous and terrain permits spread.