Clear, bright mornings with afternoon, early evening rain or thunderstorms.That’s been the pattern the last few days. A photographer I met at the Shadow Mountain Artist’s co-op in Evergreen said May was usually Monsoon season. Seems like a tropical pattern to me, but I like it whatever it is.
Right now the sun lights up a cloudy, blue sky, making the greens of the well watered ponderosas and aspens vibrant. Weather5280 says changing weather in the Pacific, especially a strengthening true El Nino, may keep us cool and wetter through the rest of the year. But, it also says, drought and dry will return, possibly in 2016.
If we stay cooler and wetter this year that should give us an opportunity to get our fire mitigation projects completed with less exposure to wildfire.
A beautiful day in the neighborhood. Clear blue skies, fluffy clouds over Black Mountain, the air cleared of dust by last night’s rain. Driving to Evergreen on Interstate 70 yesterday afternoon, there were cars pulled alongside the road taking photographs of the snow-capped mountains to the west and the buffalo herd to the north. On an Interstate. Tourist season must be getting underway.
Looking southeast from Sushi Win
And I was driving home, turning into the Front Range mountains that surround Evergreen. On a nearby one, Shadow Mountain, is our house. It’s a feeling I have often, feeling lucky to drive these mountain roads to get home.
Eating raw fish is an important part of my occasional diet and Sushi Win in Evergreen got good reviews. It was off Co. 74 and on my way, so I stopped there. The view from the window. Well.
Learned reading 5280, the local weather blog, that May is our area’s 8th snowiest month. That’s out of 9 months, with September being the least snowiest, averaging 1.1 inches while May averages 1.7 inches. These are Denver averages; we get more snow up here on Shadow Mountain.
The weather out here continues to teach this pupil its ways. I’m guessing it will take years to integrate the patterns. And climate change alters them, so new shifts will come, ones that don’t reflect old averages or historic seasonal expectations.
As Heraclitus said, you can’t step into the same weather pattern twice. Not with climate change.
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.
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.
“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
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.
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.
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.
