As we get to four o'clock on your Monday.
Hard to imagine that here we are in late February as warm as things have been.
Everyone west of I 25 under a red flag warning though, for two more hours.
That's because the hot and dry weather has been mixed in with
some pretty sturdy winds and that means any fire could spread quickly.
It
is a hold on to your hat kind of day.
A lot of gusts out there too, the wind is really cranking up.
Here's a look at the wind speeds we're dealing with to the southeast.
There was also a high wind warning for gusts up to 50 miles an hour. Kathy.
I know you always say people do not like the wind.
Yeah.
And I just think the general vibe out there just being out there,
people are really on edge when we have conditions like this.
And simply because of our history here in Colorado and we know
the wildfire season is year round and with temperatures close to 70
winds close to 70
MPH.
A lot of people are feeling very nervous like they did yesterday,
but some relief is coming in.
It's just hours away outside. Right now.
If you look off to the west, you can see those clouds being pushed vertically.
There is a lot of wind in the foothills and over the higher terrain,
uh, travel is actually pretty good on I 70 the snows come to an end.
We've got sixties and seventies still this hour across eastern Colorado.
We're typically in the forties this time of year,
we're seeing wind gusts straight out of the west to 5060 even 70
MPH. And that's creating fire danger, critical fire weather for eastern Colorado,
Nebraska and Kansas potential for gusts of 55
MPH and humidity values around 10 11%
that creates critical fire conditions.
Southeastern Colorado could see the worst of the wind with
a high wind warning that will continue through tomorrow,
but relief is coming right off to the west of us comes a cold
front that's gonna drop 1 to 2 ft of snow in the southern mountains,
but also create blowing snow and extremely difficult
travel.
Denver, you're gonna wake up to colder weather with rain showers changing to snow.
It's a fast moving system.
It's just gonna be a couple inch snow event for us, but we need the moisture.
We need to see those winds lay down a little bit
and we need some cooler weather as well and that's exactly what we're gonna get.
So as we watch the temperatures tonight, we're gonna run above average.
It's a dry windy night.
The winds will ease here in the metro area around sunset,
but not for the rest of the front range and
eastern plains till the front comes through tomorrow morning.
So I've got lots to cover and I'll have all that for you in just a few more minutes.
All right. Thank you, Kathy. We do get nervous around here when this happens.
Hot and dry conditions, not ideal for firefighters.
Today,
the West Monument Creek fire burning on the
Air Force Academy grounds is just 20% contained.
Firefighters from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs are responding.
The fire has burned 100 and 68 acres. There are no evacuation orders at this time.
Two schools though did have remote learning days because of the fire. Also today.
Fort Carson,
firefighters responded to a second wildland fire about
1130 this morning burned about 100 acres.
It's being fueled by high winds.
It's not threatening any buildings,
but it is the second fire burning on Fort Carson grounds.
The first one burned about 700 acres.
The wind even causing problems with a busy day of
busy Monday morning at Dia strong winds delayed more than 500 flights
and then there were problems at security. Yeah, quite a mess.
Things bogged down trying to get people through security at 9 a.m.
The West security wait time. It climbed up to 40 minutes.
Ts a saying there was an extremely high number of travelers departing this morning.
Take a look at the line in the picture here showing the backups.
About 37,000 packed passengers were projected to be screened before noon.
And apparently that's too many
a mother from Colorado accused of killing two of her Children
and hurting a third was back in court in London.
Today, Kimberly sr
was arrested in London back in December and
is now going through the extradition hearings.
She's facing charges for murder, attempted murder and child abuse.
The 35 year old disappeared as Colorado police prepared to
arrest her for the deaths of her nine year old daughter
and seven year old son.
According to court records,
singler was on in a long running legal dispute over the Children with her ex husband.
Now, even if the court does rule that she should be extradited,
it could take months for her to face charges here in Colorado,
the decision would be sent to the British government who
would actually have to order her removal before that.
There are multiple opportunities for her to appeal
as Denver faces massive budget cuts and an uncertain future
as to how to pay for the continuing migrant crisis.
Mayor Mike Johnston
took the day to outline the city's goals for the new year at this point.
He says every department still trying to figure out ways to save money while
hinting that Denver will be cutting some services to the newly arriving migrants.
Johnston has said that Denver is short about 100 and $80 million.
He did not make any new announcements today as to how the city plans to
make up that money.
Instead, Mayor Johnston focused on what he says,
the city does have the money for everything from revitalizing downtown to
renaming his house 1000 effort to get more people out of homelessness.
It comes as every agency from the police department to the
animal shelter has been told to look for money to cut.
You've not made any final decisions yet on
cuts are the ones that we announced already.
And so all of our departments all ranges.
We're gonna have to find a way to prioritize our mayor's office on the same thing.
Well, coming up tonight at six on next, we'll take a look at why the city says
it isn't laying off employees just cutting some hourly jobs to zero hours per week.
The federal government now trying to block
that grocery murder between Kroger and Albertson's.
The Federal trade Commission is suing to stop the $25 billion deal.
The FTC now claiming
the deal would eliminate competition in the
grocery industry and lead to higher prices.
The state of Colorado has already filed its own lawsuit to try and stop the merger.
The companies argue that the merger will help them
compete against Nonunion giants like Walmart Amazon and Costco.
Today, we're hearing the union's reaction to this latest lawsuit.
We're gonna have more for that for you tonight. On nine news at five o'clock,
a woman in Nevada called Steve on your side.
This after she got a sky high water bill and
she's been fighting the city of Nevada's utilities department over it
since last month. Yeah.
She says that record consumption happened when she was away from home
and recovering from surgery for a brain tumor.
Consumer investigator, Steve Sr
looked into her case for us and Steve, she has a lot of documentation as well.
Tons.
She brought receipts. She has her sprinkler system tested. She found no leaks
and all of her water bills since that big one are back to normal consumption.
The only thing that has changed
the city replaced her water meter.
Julie Marsoni
had a scary summer did an MRI
and discovered I had a brain tumor.
The tumor turned out to be benign but recovery from
surgery kept her away from home for nearly three months.
Then
another scare came home,
started going through my mail and I had a letter from the city of Nevada.
The letter explained her water consumption was
out of whack and to expect a big bill.
When that bill came, her jaw dropped and I just looked at it and,
and flipped out.
I said this can't be real 836 bucks for consumption
three times what she usually uses during the summer.
She usually pays less than 200 bucks that time of the year.
So she called the city and she said, well, you consumed 107,000 gallons of water.
And I said, that's impossible.
Julie says her neighbors looked after her house while she
was gone and made sure nothing was left on,
everything was shut down, the toilets were shut off.
She had the sprinkler system inspected for leaks.
Nothing.
In fact,
the only thing that's changed since that big
bill after her complaint to the water department,
Julie says a crew from the city came out to inspect her meter.
They confirmed that the consumption read 107,000 gallons,
but they also changed out her meter and since then,
her consumption is back to normal if it read 100 and 7000 gallons of consumption,
I I think the meter was defective. They disagree.
They do in a statement to Steve on your side. A spokeswoman for Arvada Water said
the team has done its due diligence to check our portion of
the system finding no malfunctions and extended the suite of financial support
that we supply to all customers.
The city did give Julie a couple of hardship
credits knocking nearly 300 bucks off that $800 bill.
She is asking for more. I I told them I am not backing down.
I want this resolved in a way that's fair
to
me and fair to the city
Arvada Water says they're currently in the
process of changing out meters everywhere and
that Julie's fix was just part of that upgrade process to the system.
Several utility advocates tell me the best way to fight a water bill like this,
especially municipal water bill is to contact your city leaders,
Judy got through to the utility director and that didn't get her too far.
The city has told me because the home was unoccupied at the time.
Quote, the reason for the consumption will remain unknown.
So in other words, they are not budging,
they're gonna give her those two hardship credits
that get her down to about 500 bucks,
but she usually pays less than 200.
Well, she, she's actually had real hardship in her life.
That's the reason she was out. And it seems to me
this would be a funny fight for the city to wanna
have and not many people have that kind of documentation.
She had the sprinkler system tested.
Uh,
she had a neighbor come over and turn off the toilets at the house while she was gone
because she had people taking care of the house
because the neighbors were the ones who found her
in the tough situation. Then they got her to the hospital. So
she's just wondering why the city won't maneuver and budge and kind of give her that.
It does seem odd. They wanna fight this one
when, when she can prove everything
strange.
I got a feeling that maybe this isn't the end of it, Steve.
Ok.
Keep us posted.