Trout fishing, Moose, Eagles &....the unfortunate effects of Climate Change :( I spend some quality time just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park, getting to know Granby and all of it's splendor. However there's a problem. The whole area is under attack from multiple climate related issues.
Something I like to do during the summer and fall for this channel, Is explore something new. Not with any idea what the purpose of the video might become. It wasn't until after 2 nights on Lake Granby, that I knew what story this lake and its surroundings would tell. OR really, 3 short stories but with a common antagonist.
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I knew the east troublesome fire burned near the Lake. What I handn't realized was that so much of the burn was visible right from the lake, giving a truly heartbreaking panoramic view of miles and miles of devastated forest. 180,000 acres is a meaninglessly large number. until you see what that means with your own eyes. But the monster partly responsible for this fire, has 3 heads. One of them breathes fire.
Lake Granby, is the second closest reservoir to the headwaters of the Colorado river and Colorado's 4 largest lake. And great things have humble beginnings. the Colorado is one the most important and well known rivers in the World. With abundant recreation, tourism, desert habitat, and desert dwelling humans far to my west. But the Colorado hasn't been flowing at it's optimal might for years. Decades of repeated drought have dried up the reservoirs from beginning to end, and as I'm saying this, many are beating all time record low water levels. Granby is down 16 feet from full while I paid this visit. The second head on this Cerberus, is drought.
The amount of dead forest in Colorado alone due to spruce and lodge-pole pine beetle kill, is staggering. 5 million acres.
Or put another way, if this were a US state, it would be the size of New Jersey. And the beetles are still killing. The third head of this hell hound unleashes pestilence at a grand scale. Trees are largely made of up of carbon extracted from the atmosphere. When the are left to rot or are burned, much of that carbon goes right back into the atmosphere.
The three headed dog of Hades has a tail of a snake. After the forest is dried and warmed, the beetles are able flourish at higher altitudes. With so much standing dry tinder, wildfires grow uncontrollable in just minutes. 2020 alone saw Colorado's largest ever wildfire, only to have that record overturned again by a different wildfire just weeks later. The tail of a snake: When the rains return, there's no longer vegetation to hold back the rock and soil. And the consequences, have shut down one of the most important expressways in the western United states for weeks. Causing hours long diversions of local, commercial and recreational traffic and rail. This 3 headed devil dog is just one of many monsters unleashed by climate change. And right now, it's going uncontested in the American west. It isn't a future problem. It's a now problem. And you can see the battle scars on Lake Granby, Colorado.