Two weeks ago, Chad Flanagan got an urgent 3 a.m. notification — get ready to leave his lifetime home in Dayton because a huge wildfire was raging down the face of the Bighorns above the rural Wyoming town.
He rushed outside to see the mountain glowing orange as the Elk Fire burned out of control.
The call to evacuate never came, but the fear and uneasiness he’s felt since took an emotional turn Friday morning.
That’s when he went outside and instead of the fire and smoke, he saw the Bighorns white with snow.
“It was one of those ‘thank you, God’ moments,” Flanagan told Cowboy State Daily. “Overnight at some point, it started raining like cats and dogs here in Dayton, and it rained really hard for a really long time.
“Then when I woke up this morning and poked my head outside, there was snow all up there. I thought, ‘Oh, thank God, we’ve got snow on the mountain.’”
It’s an emotional release Flanagan said he and many of his neighbors and others in the potential path of the Elk Fire are feeling.
“It’s relief,” he said. “If I have to come up with one word we feel here, it’s relief. We hoped we would never live to see the day where something like this would happen.”
The fire has grown to more than 96,000 acres since it was started by lightning late last month.
The storm system has already dropped more than 6 inches of snow in some of the area’s higher elevations and promises more, but it can’t hide the devastation the fire has done to the eastern face of the Bighorns, Flanagan said.
Underneath the white snow are patches of black, the charred trees and undergrowth left by the fire.
And while the snow has helped firefighting efforts, it won’t put it out. Some of the larger trees and stumps left smoldering in the backcountry will continue for weeks, or even months, before they finally burn out.
Flanagan said he and those living there know one storm isn’t the end of this fight.
“There are still hot spots, still places burning,” he said, adding that as the Elk Fire has moved south, he can see it. “We look farther to the south and we could see in the high country places that were glowing and ablaze. You just shake your head and say, ‘Wow, that is a monster.’”
More Good News
Along with helping to arrest the growth of the Elk Fire, the storm has allowed the more than 700 firefighters and support personnel managing the fight to make significant progress in gaining control of the fire.
After starting Thursday reporting 28% containment of the fire, the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 3 reports Friday that containment has grown to 44%. An updated map of the fire shows containment along the entire eastern boundary of the Elk Fire.
“Cold temperatures, high relative humidity and precipitation yesterday through the night resulted in minimal fire behavior and no growth,” the incident team reports.
The lower elevations of the fire got between 0.7 and 1 inch of rain, while above 7,000 feet got 5-10 inches of snow.
The command of the firefighting efforts also is being transferred Friday evening from Team 3 to Team 1.
“Team 3 greatly appreciates the outpouring of support, generosity and gratitude expressed by residents and communities affected by the fire,” the team reports.
The Elk Fire shows containment along its entire eastern boundary as of Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The face of the Bighorn Mountains over Dayton, Wyoming, are dusted with snow Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, a welcome sight from two weeks earlier when most of the mountain was glowing with a raging wildfire. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident) 
At the Elk View Inn near Burgess Junction on the west boundary of the Elk Fire, the snow is piling up. (Elk View Inn via Facebook)
Meanwhile, There’s The Pack Trail Fire
In the northwest corner of Wyoming, the Pack Trail Fire also reports the weather has been a huge help in gaining confinement, which is at 62% as of Friday with a little more than 89,000 acres burned. That includes the area of the Fish Creek Fire, which merged into the larger Pack Trail complex.
While the weather greatly reduces how active the fire is, it also limits what firefighters can do, said Ashley Farinacci, spokesperson for Great Basin Team 5, which is in charge of managing the fire.
Because of the rain and snow, “it was real muddy and our fire trucks are really heavy, so we couldn’t drive on a lot of the roads without getting stuck.”
Instead, they have some crews equipped with side-by-sides that could get into those areas and report on the conditions.
There also are some large tree stumps that are smoldering and putting up their own columns of smoke, she said.
“Some stumps are still producing quite a bit of smoke, and they’ll continue to burn possibly into January, it just depends,” Farinacci said. “Some of those trees are 6 feet wide and it takes awhile (for fire) to get through the middle of them.”
There wasn’t much growth of the fire Thursday and overnight thanks to the weather, she said.
“The perimeter is looking really good, it’s just the interior where it’s still smoldering,” Farinacci said.
She added that the weather “is a huge help, because our fire crews can go out when it’s wet in the morning and don’t have to worry about the fire overtaking them. It’s easier to control the fire when it’s not raging.”
Confined V. Contained
Something people notice is that the Elk Fire measures control of firefighting effort by its containment. The Pack Trail Fire, however, measures confinement.
There is a difference, Farinacci said.
“Confined is like putting a box around the fire and letting it burn to the edges of the box,” she said. “It’s confined and probably not going to get past those points.”
Containment means the progress of the fire has been stopped at a point through building fire lines or other barriers, natural or created.
Either way, the percentages reported give an idea of how much control over a wildfire the firefighting effort has achieved.
Just A Break
The much-welcomed snow is a big relief for those fighting the Elk and Pack Trail fires, but the extended forecast shows there could still be potential for them to act up again.
“We definitely expect the fire to become more active around Monday and Tuesday,” Farinacci said.
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
