Wildfire Raging in Southern Colorado Faces New Threat from Incoming Thunderstorms

There's a massive wildfire tearing through southern Colorado right now, and if you have any connection to the region — family, friends, travel plans — this one matters to you.

The fire is called the Aspen Acres Fire, and it's burning south of Colorado Springs, spreading across Pueblo and Custer counties. As of Sunday morning, it had scorched more than 86,000 acres — that's bigger than the city of Denver — and crews have only managed to get it 13% contained after nearly a week of fighting it. To put that in perspective, it's now the 8th largest wildfire by acreage in Colorado history, and it holds the grim distinction of being the highest-priority fire in the entire nation right now in terms of resource requests.

More than 3,800 homes have been evacuated, displacing roughly 11,000 people across Custer, Pueblo, Huerfano, and Fremont counties. Residents there are either under mandatory evacuation orders or on pre-evacuation notice — meaning they need to be ready to leave fast.

So why isn't this getting better faster? Because Mother Nature keeps piling on. Forecasters were eyeing incoming thunderstorms on Sunday, and here's the twist: rain sounds like good news for a wildfire, but it's not that simple. Officials and the National Weather Service warned that these storms are likely to bring gusty outflow winds — think sudden bursts of wind blasting outward from a storm — up to 50 mph, plus lightning that could spark new ignition points. There's also a real risk of flash flooding and road damage in areas already charred by the fire. So the same storms that could help douse flames could also blow them sideways and trap people trying to flee.

The human cost here is impossible to ignore. On Sunday, Colorado held a memorial service for three firefighters killed on June 27 while battling wildfires on the Colorado-Utah border: Emily Barker, Sydney Watson, and Nick Hutcherson. They died in what's called a 'burnover incident' — a terrifying scenario where a fire moves so fast that firefighters are overtaken and have to take shelter and hope the flames pass over them. Two colleagues survived the same incident and were treated for burns. Colorado Governor Jared Polis ordered flags to fly at half-staff in their honor.

And the Aspen Acres Fire isn't the only one. Just across the border in southern Utah, the Babylon Fire has burned more than 90,000 acres and is 0% contained — not a single percent. Investigators say the Aspen Acres Fire was human-caused, though no further details have been released.

If you're in the region, stay glued to local emergency alerts. If you're elsewhere, this is a reminder of how quickly fire season can escalate — and how much it demands of the people on the front lines.