Firefighters’ Prayers Answered With Snow Falling On Huge Wyoming Wildfires

On his way to work Thursday, Ranchester’s fire chief Jeff Barron couldn’t help but smile when he saw big, fat raindrops landing on his windshield.

It was just a few, but behind those raindrops he could also see the entire face of the charred Bighorn Mountains, on fire now for three weeks.

The first thing Barron remembers doing was just breathing a big old sigh of relief.

The Elk Fire has consumed 96,000-plus acres of forest land to date and threatened all the small communities that lie at its feet, and it’s been keeping Barron and many other firefighters awake at night

A chilly and wet weather pattern couldn’t have come soon enough for them. And as of noon Thursday, snow had started falling across northern Wyoming, including on the Elk Fire and the Pack Trail Fire, which have burned 96,000 acres in the Bighorns west of Sheridan and nearly 90,000 acres in the Bridger-Teton National Forest west of Dubois.

As soon as he could safely do so, Barron sent a text to his family’s group chat talking about how amazing it was to see something so small which could make such a big difference to everyone living at the foot of the Bighorns.

“I correlated it back to God and family,” he said. “And how you can center yourself when you’re in chaos and the fires are burning, even in your own lives.”

The night leading up to those raindrops, though, was anything but calm.

Southwest wind gusts up to 30 mph kept firefighters lively on the northwestern corner of the Elk Fire, near Broderick Flat. Helicopters and air tankers dropped thousands of gallons of water and retardant in the area, while crews on the ground worked hard to maintain their containment lines.

In the south, a short-range spot fire was found in the grass, southeast of Big Goose Creek, during the day. Firefighters contained it to 2.5 acres overnight.

The majority of the fire’s 4,000-acre growth came on the western side of the fire. That created huge plumes of smoke visible for miles away in communities to the east, giving no one an easy night’s rest.

The southwest wind pushed the fire backward into itself, igniting unburned fuels along the perimeter.

By Thursday afternoon, the snowfall in the area was making a difference, the Rocky Mountain Area Complex Incident Management Team reported.

"Moisture is falling across the fire!" the team reported. "Snow has started to accumulate across the fire area with up to an inch in some places already. Fire behavior is minimal and crews continue to work slowly and steadily monitoring conditions on the northwestern corner and along the southeastern side."

Not Just One, But Two Waves Of Moisture Are Ahead

The first few pattering of raindrops that Barron saw is just the beginning of what weather forecasters expect to land on the Elk Fire burning west of Sheridan and the Pack Trail fire burning west of Dubois.

The moisture is going to come across Wyoming at large in two waves, according to Cowboy State Daily’s meteorologist Don Day.

Areas will get variable amounts of moisture from Cheyenne in the southeast to Cody and Powell in the northwest and to Sundance in the northeast and Evanston in the southwest. This signals a shift in weather patterns that heralds winter is on its way.

“There’s a wave of moisture that will cut through today, then there will be a little bit of a break later this afternoon,” Day said.

The next wave of moisture will start developing overnight and run into early Friday. Accumulations have been predicted to range between 7 and 13 inches, but elevations will play a role in how big the accumulations are as well.

There will be less snow and rain at the lower elevations. At 7,000 feet and up, as much as 13 inches of snow are possible.

“The amount of precipitation may not be as heavy, but it is going to be wet,” Day said. “And the way that this is developing, it really is giving these areas where there are fires the best it can in terms of its ability to help.”

The moisture overnight Thursday and Friday won’t be the season-ender that finally kills both the Elk and Pack Trail fires, Day said.

“But it’s the beginning of the end of fire season,” he added.

Smoldering and smoke will continue throughout the day, according to the Elk Fire update from Rocky Mountain Area Complex Incident Management Team. But no growth in the fire’s perimeter is expected.

The ‘Let It Rain’ Concert

The end can’t really come soon enough, Patty Caywood, owner of The Parkman Bar and Grill told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.

She likes to be busy, but chaos is what she and everyone living at the base of the Bighorns have been dealing with since the Elk Fire began Sept. 27.

In the north, people living in Parkman and Dayton, have packed up belongings and evacuated, returned home, and then evacuated again.

In the south, in Big Horn and Story, volunteers have helpedclear flammable debris from the homes of elderly and disabled people, trying to get those homes ready to defend against the Elk Fire as it continued a seemingly unstoppable march south.

As Caywood watched raindrops spatter her office window in Sheridan, she, too, was all smiles.

“I’m hoping that this weather cooperates and that it tapers down the chaos that’s been in our community and my life, and my husband’s life, and our friends and family that have been having to deal with it,” she said. “Hopefully the rain brings snow in the mountains, which is what we’re praying for.”

Caywood’s bar has been planning a concert, aptly named “Let It Rain,” with members of the Munsick family.

“Usually, we don’t want rain and snow when we have an event, but this time we’re welcoming it,” Caywood said. “We’re open.”

The event will be a fundraiser to help with ongoing needs for fire-affected communities along the foot of the Bighorns. The Elk Fire’s days might be numbered, but its aftermath will linger long after the smoke is gone.

“This fire has impacted our community full force,” Caywood said.

A Snowball Of Generosity

Caywood started a snowball of generosity when her bar decided to accept an anonymous donation to prepare meals for firefighters and so-called Hillbilly Hotshots — ranchers and others who have outfitted their trucks with water tanks to patrol their own and neighbors’ properties for any sign of smoke or fire.

They have been instrumental in saving homes in the Horseshoe Subdivisionas well as the Double Rafter Ranch

One little post on Facebook later, her bar was filled with a mountain of generosity — water bottles and Gatorade for volunteer firefighters, chips and baked items for snack bags, wipes and ChapStick, and all kinds of other things to help people either fighting the fire or affected by it.

There were so many donations, Caywood closed for regular business and turned her bar into a distribution center instead for a week or two. She has since reopened for regular business, but continues to prepare free meals for local firefighters, including the Hillbilly Hotshots.

The event Saturday is all about recognizing the community, the volunteers, the hotshots, and all the generous people who have contributed so much to help communities living at the foot of the Bighorns.

“We decided to make the event more about the community, the volunteers, the hotshots, the local kids, the guys, the families, the husbands, wives, moms and dads,” Caywood said. “The Munsicks are a local family that were based out of Dayton and the kids went to school in our area, the Tongue River District.”

Also Elated On Pack Trail Fire

The images of a snowy Highway 26 over Togwotee Pass running through the nearly 90,000-acre Pack Trail Fire is a huge emotional boost for the hundreds of firefighters working the incident.

It’s also bringing smiles to those who have been living under the fire’s threat for weeks on end.

“It’s a big relief, for sure. We’re seeing some good snow here,” said Natali Partigianoni, a bartender and hiking guide at Brooks Lake Lodge. “We’re doing good here and getting booked for the winter.”

She said there was a lot of anticipation ahead of the storm, but to actually have snow falling on the fire is something the locals needed. They know it’s not going to put out the fire, but to have Mother Nature helping to suppress the fire rather than spread it is a relief, she said.

“We’re really, really glad to see this snow,” she said.

That was echoed by the Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team 5, which took over management of the Pack Trail Fire from a California team Wednesday afternoon.

“Really nice to see some moisture coming out of the air,” said Operations Section Chief Kendal Wilson in his Thursday video update. “We had a little bit of rain coming in at about 1 o’clock (in the morning), then some snow at about 4 a.m.”

The fire is still active “down into the southern end of the fire,” he said, adding “that’s where it’s giving us some trouble … going south in to Buffalo Meadows down kind of by the Darwin Ranch area.”

Another active area has been around Bacon Creek, which is “where we’ve seen most of the progression of the fire, where we’re still working the heavy aircraft.”

But the snow is the big story of the day for folks fighting both fires, Wilson said. While it was expected, they didn’t want to get their hopes up until the snow actually started to fall.

“Plan for the worst and expect the best,” he said.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.