But He'd Settle for Boredom

Here’s the latest map from GeoMAC. Please, use the maps here — their server is under strain right now as you might imagine.

I’m not sure just where Diana lives, but I’ve marked out a few landmarks to help you get your bearing. You flatlanders will be interested to know that the gray terrain is much higher elevation. So as you can see, the fire is still mostly in the mountains, and not yet down in the foothills.

We look at the mountains, but most of us live in the foothills. About three million, rather than the tens of thousands in the high country.

The bad news is, there are a couple places where the fire can cross more easily eastward into the populated areas (those purple hash marks on the map represent urban and suburban areas). At Monument Hill (marked on the map) and into the southwestern Denver suburbs (also marked).

Monument is a big hill — over 7,000 feet, right up next to the mountains, mostly wooded, and very dry. The mountains northeast of the fire are pretty low, and also covered in trees. If the fire is going to come east, my money is on one of both of those places.

Then it really gets interesting.

UPDATE: Zooming in on the map, I see that Highway 24 (it runs more or less east-west) could sneak in right into downtown Colorado Springs. That’s just a scare, though. Something tells me they’d bulldoze a damn big firebreak at one of the passes before letting the thing get down here.