Both maps come to us from the Southwest Coordination Center. You can find updated (looks like daily) versions of these maps at the Center’s Predictive Outlook page.

I wanted to highlight these maps, as they give a good overall sense of what’s happening in the region. Dry lightning is a huge concern right now for fire officials (right up there with fireworks) and the first map does a great job of showing how thunderstorms are behaving.

Checking the second map, you can see Silver City is just on the cusp of “Active” fire behavior, with the western third of Grant County firmly in the yellow. That second map shows what fire might do in a particular region. Wind conditions, temperature, fuel levels and other criteria determine a fire’s course and behavior, and that changes on a daily basis. Nonetheless, the overall picture is an important one to study.

Like I said, more in the Daily Press this evening.

1. It seemed as though Doug Littlejohn, the GRIP lawyer, was almost trying to purposefully antagonize District Judge J.C. Robinson. After Robinson made a point of saying he had viewed a video of the Morenci smokestacks demolition, Littlejohn insisted on playing it for the court.
2. During an exchange with John Zamar, the Phelps Dodge head of demolishing obsolete buildings (not his actual title), Littlejohn questioned why a hotline — to be manned by PD spokesman Richard Peterson — was established Tuesday, when Peterson was in court Wednesday morning. Robinson halted the questioning, saying “This is getting us nowhere, and your questions are borderline facetious.”

Finally, the quote of the day came after Zamar was excused as a witness. As he left the stand and walked toward the exit he knocked over a microphone stand, breaking a piece. Robinson:

“Can I file a claim against Phelps Dodge for that?”

Hopefully, this will give you a little indication of the courtroom atmosphere.

Bruce Anderson, a Gila National Forest wildlife biologist, provided these before-and-after photos from one of the areas that was treated with fire. As you can see from the photos above, the area is returning to more of a “woodland” system, as opposed to a heavily forested (with piñon and juniper) system. The first photo is from August, while the second photo was taken more than a year ago in April 2006.

Here’s what he said about the project:

During the past several years, project partners completed a number of prescribed burns, totaling more than 55,000 acres, in the Mangas watershed area. In addition, more than 250 erosion control structures were completed along rills in the watershed.

The difference has been drastic. Bruce Anderson, a biologist with the Gila National Forest, told the Daily Press his agency was “very supportive” of the type of habitat restoration the Mangas project fostered.

“We’re seeing tremendous results,” Anderson said. “We’ve been doing this since 2000, and we’ve seen a very definite increase in the amount of deer use in these areas, as well as many of the other species.”

One of the constants during the past two years has been the number of Forest Service employees (and others) explaining the benefits of prescribed fires. Even after the tragic Los Alamos fire, and a resulting ban on prescribed burns, those who work in forests know that fire is a natural part of the ecosystem. I was told yesterday that fire traditionally swept through areas of the Mangas Watershed every 8-11 years, based on tree ring samples.

Fire (like water and energy) is a complex topic here in the Southwest. It can be incredibly hazardous, especially to homes within the Wildland Urban Interface. But it can also play a vital role in restoring the forest to a more natual state.

That means it fell on me to design/paginate today’s front page.

I love doing layout — Adobe InDesign makes it easy simplifies the process, and it’s a nice change of pace from just writing all the time. It’s still stressful, though, like trying to build a puzzle whose pieces don’t have a set shape and can change during the procedure.

Today my colleague Meredith Purvis penned a thorough piece on the opening day of a murder trial. I had coverage of last night’s Silver City Town Council meeting, and Mary Alice Murphy reports on rising gas prices.

MAM’s article was groundbreaking because, for the first time, local gas retailers spoke on the record about pricing. You’ll have to wait for the article to appear online tonight to find out what they had to say, but I do have one treat for you:

You may want to click through to see the larger version, but that is the average gas price locally, statewide and nationwide for the past three years. It’s interesting in a “huh” kind of way, since the “Silver City” and “New Mexico” lines don’t ever track far from the national average.

Unfortunately, the information didn’t arrive in time for publication, but I wanted to pass the data along anyway.