Here's a short synopsis of The Tinder Fire as of Tuesday morning. The official burner area is now over 11,000 acres. Quite a bit of containment line has been put in place but the official percentage hasn't been released yet.
The Fire People staged a meeting in Winslow Monday evening and posted a full transcript of the event. It's the best source yet for understanding the situation. See: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/article/5763/42779/
At least one photo of a destroyed home has been posted on Twitter but officials haven't released a damage estimate yet. The fire came within 100 feet of SR 87 on Sunday.
It looks like there is very good containment on the west side of the fire and unless the winds come out of the east, it's very unlikely the fire will cross highway.
Winds will continue to be problematic Tuesday but the much-anticipated stormette will arrive by late afternoon and winds will most like lay down as the mini-storm passes. Not much precip is forecast--maybe an inch of snow on the fire line. However, temps will plummet and humidity will soar and those are the two key ingredients fire fighters love and need to have in their favor for an incident such as this one.
Once the winds lay down, fire managers will probably be able to "go direct" on the north end of the fire and bring a halt to the expansion in that area. Rumors abound that there are three four engine jet tankers waiting to drop retardant on the fire line. If those tankers can be brought into the asset mix, the tide could turn very rapidly.
There's no word yet on when evac orders will be lifted. SR 87 will remain closed until the evac orders are lifted. Officials made it clear at the meeting last night they didn't want to let people back in only to have them ordered back out. However, chances are pretty good that the evac orders will be lifted after this stormette passes and officials assess their collective progress at that time.
We're speculating the evac orders could be lifted as early as Wednesday and almost certainly no later than Thursday afternoon.
The luck of having a stormette come to the fire line is certainly a favorable factor in stemming the evolution of the Tinder Fire.
