Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Asia, Dogs, Family, Weather +Climate

Just Daily Stuff

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                                     Valentine Moon

The roads are clear. The sun is shining. The snow on the roof, the stairs up to the loft and what remained after I cleared the driveway has begun to melt. Colorado for sure. Not Minnesota. If we’d had the snow in Andover that we’ve had here, we’d be barricaded with steep white walls around our home.

Vega experienced a setback with her recovery. An infection set in and we’ve had to severely restrict her movement while hitting her with even more powerful antibiotics. With a drain in the amputation site she’s getting better, but it means a bit more drawn out road to full mobility. We’re in doggy hospital mode.

We’re working on our trip to Korea and Singapore. No tickets yet, but soon. Dog boarding has already been arranged. As with our cruise around Latin America, it will be a major expense.

Colorado, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Winter. Again.

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                                    Valentine Moon

Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016

Chinook winds brought us warm days, several in a row. Snow melted in the unshaded portions of our yard, though several inches remained over most of it. Today, though, all is white, curvy and gently rolling. We got 10 inches + overnight. Another powdery snow and it’s still falling. When the weather predictions for snow come out, we’re almost always in the area targeted for more snow. And this year, most of the time, we’ve exceeded the predictions.

Right now the snow falls in big, fat flakes, what I’ve come to think of as flour sifter snow. Somewhere above us an angel or an aeronautical giant has a huge bin of snow, a gigantic screen on the bottom. They’re working that bin back and forth, back and forth.  The lodgepole’s branches, already bent toward the earth, bow down even more. The aspen outside this window (I’m in the house in our home office.), our only deciduous tree up here, looks on, placid and stripped down for the season. Waiting.

The solar panels wed us even more to the cycles of weather and the sun’s angle. When snow covers the panels, no production. When the sky is cloudy, production diminishes. As the days lengthen and the sun rises higher in the sky, production increases. The solar panels are our photosynthesis. We have become plants. Sunshine = energy.

Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Still Trying to Get This Done

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

As the chinook winds have eaten our snow cover and dried out the grasses and downed trees, the fire hazard went up to a red flag warning on Wednesday. That means that if a fire happens, it has a good chance, a very good chance, of getting out of control. Not that I needed more to concentrate my mind on fire mitigation.

The chainsaw has sat idle for some weeks now as arthritis and snow cover combined to keep it in the garage. Though I could get out now, I haven’t. On some days the winds have been too high, on others I just didn’t feel like it. I still have several trees to remove, almost all now in the back, a few trees to limb and several trunks to cut into fireplace size logs for curing.

That I can do. What I also want are external fire sprinklers. They exist. It’s possible to imagine a system for our home, but external sprinklers are not part of the fire mitigation culture here. Even the Colorado State Forest Service recommended against one in a letter to me: “…too many variables that could go wrong with the system, including losing power during a wildfire, or forgetting to drain the system during cold weather and the pipes freezing.” Well, we have a working generator. At last! And, draining a system…well, we can get that done.

Still, because of this hesitancy, the folks who do fire mitigation have not developed products or services for homeowners. So this week I’m going to start contacting irrigation companies. They understand the technology and might be able to construct our system.

When I had the assistant chief of the Elk Creek Fire Protection District come out and do a fire mitigation analysis for our property, he said that external sprinklers do work and they would work here. Just not many folks doing it. Well, we’re gonna be among them, one way or the other, and I need to get this work done before May.

Asia, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Saturday

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                             Valentine Moon

 

Not used to being the slow one, but in our tai chi class, now in its 6th week of 8, I am. It’s ok though. I need repetition and once I get it, I’ll have it, so speed of learning is not so important here as quality over time. Physically co-ordinated things have never been my shining moment.

The weather has been warm and in mid-winter on the eastern slopes that means chinooks. Warm = windy at this time of year. Still learning the weather patterns. It has made for outstanding electricity production. Yesterday’s output is below.

Feb 19 2016

 

Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

At 8,800 feet

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                                                Valentine Moon

These chinook winds are formidable. Here’s the weather advisory for today:

High Wind Warning remains in effect until noon MST Friday... 

* timing... southwest winds will increase in the Front Range
  foothills through the afternoon... peaking in the late afternoon
  and evening hours.

* Winds... west to southwest 30 to 45 mph with gusts to 80 mph
  mainly above 7500 feet. West to northwest winds 35 to 50 mph
  with possible gusts to around 90 mph tonight and Friday
  morning.

* Impacts... people planning travel should be prepared for very
  strong cross winds causing hazardous driving conditions. Hikers
  should be alert for falling trees. Power outages will also be
  possible.


And, just to add something extra to winter: a red flag warning.


Red flag warning remains in effect until 6 PM MST this evening
for wind and low relative humidity for areas south and southeast
of Denver... fire weather zones 216... 241... 245... 246... and 247... 

* affected area... fire weather zones 216... 241... 245... 246 and 
  247.

* Timing... gusty winds will continue through with humidities
  dropping. Winds will remain very strong this evening but
  humidities will increase.


A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now or will occur shortly. A combination of
strong winds... low relative humidities... and dry fuels can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.  If a fire is started or
ongoing the potential for it to rapidly spread is high.
Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

The Beauty Way

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                              Stock Show Moon

Go now, the snow has ended. This paraphrase of the last words of the Catholic mass sums up life after 18 inches of snow. Things get moving again after the last snow falls and the plows get roads opened and sanded. That last being especially important for those of us who live in the mountains.

Snow storms bring beauty in their wake unlike their wilder cousins tornadoes, hurricanes, derechos. Here are a couple of photographs from this morning.

Feb 3 500 Feb 3 2500

Park County, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Snow Dominant

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                          Stock Show Moon

mountain lion 1.16.16 near Mt. Bailey
mountain lion 2.1.16 near Mt. Bailey

The snow. A lot more overnight. Beautiful, foggy on Black Mountain. Lodgepole branches white and bowing toward the earth awaiting a wind to slough off the snow. We become snow hermits, watching the flakes fall in our forested backyard, feeling a part of the mountain in a way not possible under other weather conditions.

It’s funny, but the snow, which dominates life when it comes in this quantity, is more important than Cruz beating Trump or Bernie tieing Hillary. We are apart from the lower, literally lower, 48 states, sitting up here on Shadow Mountain surrounded by other peaks and covered in white. The dominant note here is silence. Politics are too noisy, too bright and colorful to matter. And faraway.

This will change of course. In the way of Colorado the roads will be clear soon. The driveway, after I blow it, will also clear. The quiet will last a while though, as will the snow in the yard. Even warmer temperatures won’t touch that in the near term.

Right now our solar panels have a snowy cap maybe a foot deep, so no electricity from them until a melt. I’m going to investigate deep cycle batteries and see if there’s a combination of deep cycle batteries and our generator that might carry us off the grid entirely. That is not yet, however. For now we’re relying on IREA to pump electricity into our system.

 

Memories, Minnesota, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

A Snowman Will Want to Be Inside

Leave a comment

Yule                                                                                      Stock Show Moon

You wanna find Stock Show weather? Go to Minnesota this weekend. Friend Tom Crane sent me a link to the Updraft blog of MPRNews. “Thought you might want to know what you’re missing,” he said.

Weather January 16, 17 2016

Paul Huttner, the meteorologist for the Updraft blog, repeated a Minnesota weather nostrum often used at times like these: “The only thing between Minnesota and the North Pole is a barbed wire fence.”

In Minnesota, not often, but often enough, you realized the weather could kill you. No winds necessary. This will be one of this times.

Colorado, at least for us so far, doesn’t produce weather like this. If you go higher in altitude, then yes, you can find extreme winter cold, but even at 8,800 feet nothing like this. Can’t say I miss that bitter cold. though looking out the window from a warm house, over a snowy frozen landscape has its charms.