Lee Fire now fifth-largest single wildfire in Colorado history. These are the other four.

CBS News

12 hours ago

The Lee Fire near Meeker is now over 113,000 acres, fire maps show, and has surpassed the Spring Creek Fire of 2018 as the state's fifth-largest wildfire.
Over 1,000 firefighters and a dozen aircraft are involved in efforts to contain and extinguish the fire, along with the nearby Elk Fire. A number of evacuations have already been ordered. For a live, interactive evacuation zone map, you can click here.
The size of the fire has exploded since growing from 13,000 to almost 23,000 acres on Aug. 6, when Gov. Jared Polis issued an emergency disaster declaration. It has grown steadily in the days since, breaking 100,000 acres on Sunday.
The Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control maintains a list of the largest wildfires in the state's history. A quick overview of the agency's data shows the following:
No homes have been lost in the fire, but several structures have been damaged. A full accounting of the damage likely can't be completed until the fire is extinguished, and as of Monday afternoon, it was only 7% contained.
The most destructive fires in the state's history so far are as follows:
At its current size on Monday, only four fires in state history are larger than the Lee Fire, although the West Fork Complex of 2013 comprised several fires in close proximity to one another, including the West Fork Fire at 58,570 acres and the Papoose Fire at 49,628 acres. Some rankings group the fires all as one, but the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control categorizes and ranks them separately.
That agency's list shows the following four fires as being the only ones larger than the Lee Fire:
Weather conditions are not expected to help containment efforts for some time, with relatively low humidity and winds of 7 to 10 mph until Friday.
"Near critical fire weather will return today," the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team said in a statement. "This will include low relative humidity, periods of gusty winds from the north and clouds in the late afternoon. Critical dry fuels with the expected weather could result in extreme fire behavior in some areas of the Lee Fire."
There will be a community meeting about the Lee Fire at 7 p.m. on Monday at Colorado Mountain College's Rifle Campus, 3695 Airport Road, where fire officials will provide updates to the public and answer any questions that community members have.