A WORRIED HOMEOWNER NAMED MARK Winkel stood on his porch and pointed his telescope at a wildfire ripping through the forest several miles from his home outside Los Alamos, New Mexico. The blaze had started 12 hours earlier when a strong gust knocked an aspen into a power line in Las Conchas, a hiking trail along a 13-mile-wide caldera called the Valles Grande. Already it had torched about 7,000 acres, an impressive rate of spread, but predictable given the heavy winds and the onset of fire season, which would last until July's monsoons finally saturated the tinderbox.
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