Daily Archives: July 2, 2016

Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Garage Logic

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Summer                                                                Moon of the Summer Solstice

Garage and shedThat garage looks better now. Over to Mountain Waste System’s transfer station outside Pine Junction. Backed up to a big trench, a mega trash compactor. Boards, pieces of old kitchen counter, some plastic bins, a too damaged drafting table, and a printer stand with a slot for the paper feed from a dot matrix printer went in. Would have been a perfect place to dispose of a body. Paid the guy $10 and left.

Shelving is up in the garage and has my journals and other too much stuff stuff from the loft. Kate put up a tire rack which now holds the four Blizzaks, ready for the next winter. Jon and Max (his buddy from Minneapolis) have started work on benches for our tools and the top for my multi-purpose cart. The whole space has become more organized though there’s still a good bit to go.

Meanwhile rain has come down most of the day. Eduardo rented a machine to augur in foundation supports for the new carport he’s building. A wet day for that sorta work.

 

Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Rain

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Summer                                                                      Moon of the Summer Solstice

Black Mountain July 2Flash flood warning last night. Heavy rains. Seemed silly the first time, flash flood watch for us, living on a mountain. But of course to get anywhere we have to drive down the mountain. All those creeks: Shadow, Brook Forest, Maxwell, Cub, Deer, Bear. We follow the water down the mountain and there are points where it can escape its banks. Back in 2012 there was significant flooding in Boulder and Manitou Springs and Golden.

Rain dots the screens as I look up toward Black Mountain. It’s shrouded in gray light, the lodgepoles massed and black. The peak of Black Mountain extends 1,200 feet above our altitude here at home, so it dominates the view to the west.  Beyond it about 10 miles is Mt. Evans, our weathermaker. Still not sure the exact meteorology of its effects, but they are striking. We get much more precipitation than other areas, many of them physically close to us, but in different relationship to our local 14’er.

According to Weathergeek, who posts on pinecam.com, June saw 3.57 inches of rain making it the rainiest June ever up here. An atypically wet year so far, thanks to El Nino and now the monsoon rains. The bad news about all this rain is, of course, that it makes the grass grow, the shrubs grow, small trees, too. This is a problem as things dry out in mid-July and August. More fuel for the possible wildfires, making them likely to spread, to burn faster and hotter.