A former resident of Superior and 1968 graduate of Superior High School, Caryn Geiger, is among thousands of Colorado residents who on Thursday fled from a wildfire in the Boulder, Colo., area. Most had little time to gather their important belongings before having to flee.

Employed as a Realtor, her home is in Superior, Colorado, a town of about 12,500.

She told friends on the weekend that her house was spared and she was being allowed to return, however, the house was without heat and the town was devastated.

Nearly 1,000 homes and other structures were destroyed by the fire and three people were unaccounted for on Monday. The fire started on Thursday.

Winds which gusted to 105 miles per hour whipped the fire through a drought-stricken area and charred entire neighbors in the suburban area between Denver and Boulder. On Friday, at least 6 inches of snow fell on the still-smoldering remains of the homes destroyed by the fire and the mercury sank into the single digits.

Superior, Colorado, is located about 20 miles northwest of Denver. The blaze burned at least 9.4 square miles.

For such Colorado fires, it broke out unusually late in the year following an extremely dry fall and amid a winter nearly devoid of snow until the overnight snowfall.

The cause was being investigated. Power lines are often thought to be cause of such fires but utility officials found no downed power lines around the area where the fire broke out. Investigators said nearly a foot of new snow on the ground where the fire is thought to have started, was hampering the investigation.

The two communities hit by the fire, Superior and Louisville, are filled with middle- and upper-middle-class subdivisions with shopping centers, parks and schools.

Ninety percent of the county is classified as being in a severe to extreme drought. The area hasn’t had substantial rainfall since mid- summer. Denver set a record for consecutive days without snow before it got a small storm on Dec. 10, it’s last snowfall before the wildfires broke out.