Colorado Weather: Extremely Critical Fire Danger Into Friday Evening For Denver, Foothills, Plains

DENVER (CBS4) - We've been preparing you all week for extremely critical fire danger today in Denver, the adjacent foothills and on the plains. If a new fire were to start it could spread at an exponential rate due to the very warm, dry and windy conditions expected.

The past several weeks have produced a lot of days with critical fire danger, but today's threat has the "extremely" tag associated with it. According to the National Weather Service in Boulder, this isn't very common in Colorado. They say it has only been used once since the year 2010 and that was on March 26, 2012, which is the day the Lower North Fork Fire, which was a prescribed burn, got out of control.

Part of what is making this day different compared to some of the other recent days with high fire danger is the extremely warm air combined with the low relative humidity and wind. Afternoon highs in Denver should climb into the middle 80s today with relative humidity values potentially as low as 5 to 10%.

Red flag warnings will be in effect through sunset for the eastern half of Colorado, including the entire Interstate 25 corridor from the Wyoming to New Mexico state line. Wind gusts could approach 65 mph at times in the warned area. On the eastern plains we could see issues with blowing dust and reduced visibility.

A cold front will cool temperatures down significantly for the weekend which will bring the fire danger down a little bit, but it will remain high due to the strong wind. A few light rain showers will be possible in Denver and on the eastern plains on the backside of this storm over the weekend but nothing significant is expected.