DENVER -- An erratic wildfire charging through extremely dry land in the heart of Colorado ski country destroyed three homes and forced people to flee in the middle of the night, authorities said Thursday.
Elsewhere in Colorado, a rare high-elevation tornado touched down at the site of another wildfire Thursday but apparently caused little damage and had no effect on the fire.
They were among more than 60 large blazes burning across the United States, mostly in the West, where whipping winds and increasing heat have made it easy for flames to spread.
Fires exploded in Northern California and in the Southwestern U.S., where a prolonged and severe drought has desiccated forests.
In Colorado, residents of multimillion-dollar properties, modest condos and mobile homes were ordered to evacuate early Thursday because of an unpredictable wildfire reported the night before near the town of Basalt. More than 500 homes were affected.
The Eagle County Sheriff's Department said no other homes had been lost besides the three reported earlier.
Smoke from the fire temporarily halted flights at Aspen's airport about 20 miles away. Authorities believe the flames started after people at a shooting range used tracer bullets, which illuminate the path of fired bullets.
A tornado was reported Thursday south of Fairplay, a central Colorado town about 10,000 feet above sea level. It appeared to touch down at or near the edge of a wildfire that has burned about 17 square miles, National Weather Service meteorologist Russell Danielson.
Tornadoes are rare at that elevation and are seldom seen at any wildfire, Daniels said.
Another Colorado wildfire about 205 miles southwest of Denver destroyed more than 130 homes and forced more than 2,000 people in three counties to evacuate.
Cooler weather in Northern California helped crews gain some ground on a blaze threatening more than 1,400 buildings, but it still grew to 134 square miles, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The fire northwest of Sacramento has forced evacuations, but no buildings have burned.
In northern New Mexico, a wildfire closed in on a ranch where novelist D.H. Lawrence once sought spiritual renewal. Officials said a fire in drought-stricken Carson National Forest has scorched nearly 4 square miles since June 24. Forest restrictions imposed last week closed the University of New Mexico's D.H. Lawrence Ranch, which hosted the writer in the summers of 1924 and 1925 as well as Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, author Willa Cather and artist Georgia O'Keeffe after Lawrence's 1930 death.
In Utah, scorching summer conditions and winds quickly pushed flames through bone-dry vegetation near a popular fishing lake about two hours southeast of Salt Lake City. The 66-square-mile fire near Strawberry Reservoir has destroyed about 30 structures.
Information for this article was contributed by Russell Contreras and Brady McCombs of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/06/2018