Beltane Beltane Moon
Geologist Tom Zeiner from the Colorado Native Plant class calls it the “solar snowshovel.” Without spending a dime or even removing the snowblower from the garage, the weekend’s snow has melted and transpired from the driveway. This will continue to amaze me for some time. What a treat.
The forecast has rain in all of the next ten days save 2. That means more water going downhill added to the already high water levels. But, no snow.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Snow began coming down in parallel streaks about 2 p.m. yesterday. It built up quickly, then slacked off. Overnight more snow fell. This is snow with a 3/1-7/1 water ratio so it’s wet, heavy. I estimate 4-6 inches which, with a different water ratio, would have been 12-18 inches.
10 days after Beltane, the beginning of summer in Celtic lands, we have snow laden ponderosa boughs, a driveway covered in a thick blanket, roofs and yard all white.
This brings us to flooding. According to weather5280, the front range has absorbed all the water it can. The rest now gallops downhill like a herd of wild mustangs. Up where we are the mountain streams are thick with fast moving water. It has spread beyond stream banks and minor flooding has occurred. But we’re the feeder system, our streams smaller, more shallow. It’s when Cub Creek hits Maxwell Creek and the two become one heading for Evergreen that the real danger happens.
Down mountain the streams collect the Cub Creeks, the Maxwell Creeks, the Shadow Brooks to create fast moving, not to be restrained small rivers. A couple of years ago this created serious flooding in Boulder, Golden, Manitou Springs, Denver all distinguished by their positions along the beginning of the high plains.
(This one from May 9th.)
All the water from the Eastern Slopes, by virtue of gravity’s strong pull, has a passionate desire to get lower, reduce the tractor beam energy created by lower altitudes. And it will see its desire met. No matter what lies in its way.
This is nature at its wildest. Floods are a force like hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, wildfire. We humans build our houses, pave roads, throw up restaurants, grocery stores and filling stations and often wild nature lets us have them for a time. But. Ask the residents of New Orleans after Katrina, of New York City after Sandy, the nearby residents of Waldo Canyon who saw the 2012 Waldo Canyon fire ravage their homes, the merchants in Manitou Springs who had two feet of mud in their basements, folks living in Moore, Oklahoma after the F-5 tornado did a Dorothy on their homes. Ask them whether human artifice seems so permanent.
Now there is significantly more water up here in the mountains. It came over the last week in the form of rain and today, for those of us above 8,000 feet, as snow. The rain is already on its way to the Denver metroplex. The snow may, thankfully, delay some of the water by plugging up streams and releasing its own moisture gradually over the next days.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Hmmm.
“Snow for the northern and central mountains is looking like a sure-bet, and with that the National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch which goes into effect Saturday afternoon and continues through Saturday night. Heavy snow at elevations >8,500 feet for the northern and central mountains will add up to 10 to 20″ by Sunday morning. If your plans take you into the mountains Saturday afternoon, please plan for winter driving conditions.” weather5280
Beltane Beltane Moon
Kate’s come down with some kind of bug. She went to the Colorado Potter’s show on Friday, the National Quilt Festival on Saturday and had the grandkids on Sunday. That’s a lot. Exhaustion plus many strangers can = not feel good.
Vega’s going into the vet today. She’s been listless since the attack yesterday and I discovered several more bites last night. She becomes very protective of her body when she’s hurt and didn’t allow examination until then. Kep, the attacker, goes to Paws and Claws for furmination today. He’s shedding with the seasonal change. A new issue for us since we’ve had dogs that don’t really blow their coats.
The Michelins go onto today at 2:00 pm. That means the Blizzaks will come home to stand ready for the next snow season. Which might be this weekend. Forecasts have us getting 5-8″ of snow on Friday or Saturday. How bout that?
Finally, tonight at 6:00 pm, if it’s not raining hard, I’ll take my Colorado Flora and its many taxonomic keys to Green Mountain in Lakewood. This will be practice for the Friday and Saturday classes at Mt. Falcon in Morrison and Sterling respectively.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Dewpoint and temperature hovering together. Smoke in the mountains. Ponderosa pines covered in low hanging clouds. The air is, uncharacteristically for most of the year, humid. The green revolution has moved up Shadow Mountain to Black Mountain and Black Mountain Drive. No flowers yet, but lots of grass, ground cover, dogwoods and willows.
We’re down to the final movement in the Real Estate Symphony. The pace picks up as it does in the music hall. The inspection report is done. A few items to attend to, but not many though managing their completion from 900 miles will present some challenge. Not insuperable. Closing by May 29 if not before.
With the Andover house rocketing toward new (and appreciative) ownership and my biopsy scheduled for next Monday resolution of difficult issues could be close. When the closing is over, the house sale will be over. And none too soon. When a diagnosis is on the table, then next steps can be considered, action taken, not just waiting.
It’s possible, even likely, that we’ll hit June with the energy from resolution spurring us into the summer.
Spring Beltane Moon
Another large snow storm for us. Probably one last time. This forecast has snow only for elevations above 8,000 feet. We had snow showers yesterday, brief but dense.
Spring Beltane Moon
We have significant snow on the ground with only 10 days to go until Beltane. Of course, temperatures will rise. Even with the temperatures in the mid-forties like the last couple of days our magical south facing driveway eliminated several inches of snow all by itself. As Jon says, sweet.
We have limited experience of mountain weather, but what we’ve seen so far we like. Snow against the ponderosa pines looks like the background of a book cover for a Zane Grey novel. The snow itself, until this last one, was mostly powder, light and fluffy, easy to remove when necessary. The fluctuation in temperatures from moderate lows (compared to Minnesota) to warm (compared to Minnesota) mean the cruel burdens of winter like long lasting ice, snow cover on roads, very cold temperatures and snow piled in huge mountains reducing the size of parking lots are mostly absent.
Spring New (Beltane) Moon
More snow this morning, maybe 2-3 inches. According to Weather5280 we had 24″ by midday yesterday. So, maybe 27″ now with more snow forecast for tonight, 1-3″. It’s not hard to see that we might reach 3 feet before the whole system moves out on Sunday. That’s a lot of snow. Moisture wise it amounts to something like 3 inches of rain. All needed and welcome.
Though. I do need to blow the driveway this morning. And this is heavy, wet snow. The kind that plugs up snowblowers and makes the task harder.
The Rodeo All-Stars event on the National Western Stockshow grounds started last night, but I missed the first round. Too much snow here. However, I don’t want to miss the whole event, which has another semi-final rodeo today at 2:30 pm and the finals at 7:00 pm.
So I’ll push my little yellow Cadet out into the snow. It has a special tool for unplugging, an innovation which eliminates the need for wooden spoons or other makeshift devices. The manual and the safety stickers on the snowblower remind the user not to stick their hands into the auger while it’s running. Which common sense, too, would warn against.
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
From the Weather5280 blog:
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Snow continues, coming down in narrow linear columns like rain and floating down, too, like snow flakes gently drifting. The result is an odd mixture of lightly falling and pelting. We have a motion sensor on the light near our deck and it came on and stayed on during the storm, not sure why.
Now the day dawns, a grey-blue, snow still falling, forecast to continue until tonight at least. The ponderosas look like melted tapers. No paper this morning. Not surprising.
