Menaced By Flames, Nuclear Lab Peers Into Future of Wildfire

A haze of wildfire smoke hangs over the Upper Rio Grande valley and the mesa-top city of Los Alamos, N.M., on Thursday, May 12, 2022. Public schools and many businesses were closed as a wildfire crept closer to the city and companion national security laboratory. Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are using supercomputers and ingenuity to improve wildfire forecasting and forest management amid drought and climate change in the American West. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

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By Associated Press

May 13, 2022 at 10:03 PM UTC

Updated on

May 14, 2022 at 4:41 AM UTC

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Los Alamos N.M. (AP) -- Public schools were closed and evacuation bags packed this week as a stubborn wildfire crept within a few miles of the city of Los Alamos and its companion U.S. national security lab — where assessing apocalyptic threats is a specialty and wildland fire is a beguiling equation.

Lighter winds on Friday allowed for the most intense aerial attack this week on those flames west of Santa Fe as well as the biggest U.S. wildfire burning farther east, south of Taos.