BIG SUR, Calif. — A wildfire that started near the coast in Big Sur jumped to 1,500 acres by Saturday morning, largely due to gusty winds that blew the flames in unpredictable directions and prompted a large number of evacuations, Cal Fire officials said.
The Colorado fire was reported at about 7:15 p.m. in the Palo Colorado Canyon and Rocky Creek Road area in Monterey County, according to Cal Fire.
Responders had reached 5% containment and were in an active firefight on Saturday morning, with residents told to avoid Big Sur and Carmel and Highway 1 closed in both directions.
But conditions to battle the fire improved Saturday morning as the winds died down and the humidity went up, according to the National Weather Service. In the Bay Area, the same winds that spread the Colorado Fire toppled trees in the Oakland Hills.
The highway closure spanned from near the Andrew Molera State Park entrance area in Big Sur to Rio Road in Carmel, according to Caltrans District 5.
Although it started near the coast, the fire became aligned with fast-moving winds blowing in both directions and “made a run through the canyons,” Cal Fire Assistant Chief George Nunez said in an interview.
“It moved surprisingly fast for a fire around this time of year,” said Nunez, who works in Cal Fire’s San Benito-Monterey unit. “We had a little bit of moisture and it was cold last night, but because of the winds, it burned along the slope, catch another wind and then blew in another direction.”
More than 120 firefighters were on scene Friday night, but the canyons were so steep and dark that responding crews were not able to begin actively containing the flames until the morning hours, Nunez said. The cause of the fire was also still under investigation.
Humidity was in the teens and gusts were clocked around 35 mph on Friday night, according to the National Weather Service.
Drew Peterson, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the winds near the Colorado Fire are predicted to be “pretty light” today, but he said firefighters will have to look out for subtle wind shifts.
Meanwhile high winds in the North Bay overnight stoked another fire. Crews put out an overnight vegetation fire at Geyser Peak in Sonoma County amidst high winds, containing the burn at 1.41 acres. No communities were threatened and the fire was no longer burning on Saturday morning, a spokesman for Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake Napa Unit said.
A National Weather Service wind advisory for higher elevations in the East Bay Hills and the Santa Cruz Mountains is expiring Saturday morning as winds die down, but gusts over 90 miles per hour were recorded in the North Bay in at least two locations just east of the fire location Friday night through Saturday morning.
Peterson says the forecast for the North Bay predicts winds will continue to die down throughout the day on Saturday.
———
