The Las Conchas fire started yesterday around 1PM and already has burned about 50,000 acres.  Consider that the Pacheco Canyon fire, just north of Santa Fe, has been burning for 10 days and has only burned about 10,000 acres gives you an idea of how fast this one is going.  And, consider that the Los Alamos area had a huge fire just over 10 years ago in the Cerro Grande to understand how tense things are around here. The Cerro Grande fire took about one month to be fully contained and burned about 48,000 acres by that point (the Las Conchas fire officially has burned about 43,000 acres as of this writing).

We had a pretty good view of the developing fire from our bedroom yesterday.  Here are some photos from late afternoon-early evening when the fire had “only” burned about 5,000 acres.  We woke up this morning to a dusting of ash all over everything.