Rocky Mountain National Park was burning. Once-tranquil mountain valleys and ranches were choked with smoke and flames. Thousands of cars jammed onto two-lane rural roads as new evacuation orders popped up by the minute. Scenes of panic and destruction played out across Northern Colorado on Thursday as a late-season wildfire exploded through the parched woods and valleys around the national park, offering a grim example of how climate change is making fire seasons longer and more destructive across the West. “This is the worst of the worst of the worst,” said Sheriff Brett Schroetlin of Grand County, where the East Troublesome Fire had burned about 170,000 acres by Thursday evening. The fire destroyed what Sheriff Schroetlin characterized as “lots” of structures as it chewed through swaths of ranches, second homes, businesses and cabins, but officials did not have any estimates on […]