BOULDER, Colo. -- Nearly 3,000 people were forced to flee from a fast-moving fire in north-central Colorado and authorities believe some buildings were lost.
The CalWood Fire started about noon Saturday near the Cal-Wood Education Center, which is about 17 miles from downtown Boulder, Colo. It was pushed by strong winds. The National Center for Atmospheric Research's Mesa lab recorded gusts of 59 mph on Saturday.
More than 1,600 residences and nearly 3,000 people were under evacuation orders, including the small town of Jamestown, Boulder County officials said.
"There were a number of aircraft on order," Boulder County sheriff's office Division Chief Mike Wagner said in a news briefing Sunday. He said the fire is the largest blaze in Boulder County history based on its acreage, and that teams have not been able to access the area to determine how many homes and other structures may have been lost.
"We still think just based on the path of the fire and how it moved and the area that it went through that that number is likely large," Wagner said.
The fire had burned nearly 14 square miles by Sunday morning, but more humid weather was expected to help fire crews.
"Everyone is thrilled with the weather this morning," Jennifer Bray, spokesperson with the Boulder County Emergency Operations Center, told The Denver Post on Sunday. "And hoping that will be a big help in their efforts today."
The plan for Sunday was for aerial crews to hit the fire "as hard as they can" before winds picked up later in the day, Wagner said.
A fire that started Sunday about 20 miles northwest of Boulder led to the evacuation of the small town of Ward, which has about 150 residents, Boulder County officials said.
Meanwhile, the Cameron Peak fire, which started in mid-August and is burning west of Fort Collins, has grown to 318 square miles and was 62% contained on Sunday. More than 1,500 firefighters are working the blaze, which is the largest fire in Colorado history.
A spot fire east of the main Cameron Peak fire burned homes overnight Friday and into Saturday, Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith said in a Facebook post Sunday morning. He said homes were lost in The Retreat in Glen Haven, but did not say how many. The sheriff's office will assess the damage and notify homeowners.
In addition, the East Troublesome Fire is also active near Grouse Mountain, to the west of Rocky Mountain National Park. Smoke from these fires can be seen on satellite imagery, drifting across the country.
Normally in October, Colorado sees winter weather setting in in earnest, with mountain snows and changeable conditions, oscillating between springtime temperatures and winter, along the Rocky Mountain Foothills, including Boulder.
However, so far this year, precipitation has been far below average, and winter has not asserted itself.
According to the Colorado Climate Center, which is part of the Colorado State University atmospheric sciences department, it was unheard of for large wildfires of more than 11,000 acres to ignite in the Rocky Mountain State so late in the year from 1992 to 2015.
The Colorado blazes also come amid the worst wildfire season on record in California, where well over 4.1 million acres has gone up in flames, destroying more than 9,000 structures and killing 31 people. The acreage burned this year is more than twice the area in the state's previous record-worst fire season, in 2018. This year's fires include that state's largest, the August Complex, the state's first "gigafire" on record, at more than 1 million acres.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Freedman of The Washington Post and by staff members of The Associated Press.