It snowed! I got up this morning to a dusting of snow. Yea! Although at our house we had less than a half inch, my office in Boulder had about that much, it goes down on record as the first snowfall of the season.
Of course, the mountains, SW Denver suburbs and the eastern plains got more than we did. In fact, the snow we did have has already melted and you can’t tell it snowed at all anymore. 🙁
I’m ready for more. Maybe a Thanksgiving blizzard???
Frost – 
Freezes –
Sprinklers winterized –
Trees littering the ground with leaves –
Geese returned –
Snow – Snow? Snow?!
It’s 75° right now! We should have had our first snow by now…where’s the snow??
Not quite yet, but Noah will be turning the on the heater tonight. Neither one of us likes to get out of bed in the morning to a cold room…especially since nighttime temperatures have now dropped into the 30s. Plus it might snow this weekend (rain/snow showers), with highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s. Last night we also had our first frost advisory. I didn’t notice any on the ground when I left this morning…but we did cover the tomatoes just in case. It won’t be long before we have to turn off and clean out the sprinkler system.
In other news, a Lava story. On occasion, Lava will whine when the phone rings. Not sure why, she doesn’t do it all the time. She does do it more often when Noah is not home. Sometimes she even bellows. I’ve told Noah about it before, but Lava doesn’t do it when he’s in the house…even hiding in another room. Last night Noah was out helping friends and called the house. Lava whined/cried/carried on. It was funny. So I had my mom call the house to get Lava’s reaction to the phone on video. She gets really loud when she hears Noah’s voice on the answering machine. I have the video posted on my Facebook profile, but if you’re not on Facebook I also posted it on YouTube. You can check it out here.
If the last two years of living in Colorado are any indication, we are about a month out from our first snow. In preparation I have created the snow tally page for the 2008-2009 winter/snow season. Of course, there are no measurements yet, but be sure to check back throughout the winter.
How I know it’s no longer Summer in Colorado:
Last time I checked, this was the middle of August…right? I haven’t jumped into some space-time continuum that secretly transported me into another season, have I? Then what happened to summer? It wasn’t so long ago that Colorado smashed a record with the most days of 90+ degree weather (I think it was 27), and this past week wasn’t exactly cold either with the mercury rising well into the 80s. But that all changed on Friday. How you say? How about with temperatures stuck in the low 50s, 36 hours of straight rain (at least — not to mention the off and on showers after that) and snow in the high country. Yes I said snow. The lows here were only three or so degrees from tying the record! The weather here is so random and although I don’t mind cold weather, I rather prefer it not to fall in the middle of August!
I like a good thunderstorm…I think it’s because they were rare where I grew up and never rarely posed a threat (I can only recall about 3 times it hailed during the 22 years I lived in Ventura. Plus my mom really enjoyed them, so as a child seeing her excited probably passed along to me (although this theory did not carry over to my sister).
So, now that I live in an area that is prone to regularly occurring thunderstorms I get excited. I even drove through a monster of a storm last summer (a storm that would have been wise to pull over during had there been a place to pull over) – talk about an adrenaline rush! But out here, thunderstorms can produce not only strong winds and damaging hail but also *gasp* tornadoes! Although, thankfully, no tornadoes have touched down near where I live we have been subjected to a couple of tornado watches and warnings (neither of which I relish).
Last night was no different. Lots of storms in the area, thanks to the remnants of Tropical Storm Edouard, and all we got at our house was rain and some thunder in the distance…then came the tornado warning. However, before the rain started to fall, I had gone out front to enjoy the smell of it on the air (who doesn’t like the smell of rain?). As I watched the clouds move in over our neighborhood I caught sight of the anemometer we have on our roof and noticed it could not choose one direction from which the wind was blowing. I called Noah out front to take a look and he also noticed the clouds in front of our house were swirling. Now that was freaky! The clouds were forming a tight screw-like swirl right before our eyes. I asked Noah if they looked green to him, he said no, so we didn’t worry to much and went back inside. It wasn’t much longer after that I got a message on my phone about a tornado warning for our county, but cities north of ours.
Since the warning did not specifically include our city, the sirens near our house never went off and we were able to sit back and enjoy the sound of the well-needed rain hitting the roof and the breeze blowing my windchime. If the sirens did sound you can bet that one of us would have grabbed Lava and the three of us would be huddled in the crawl space under our house (we don’t have a full basement because we are close enough to the foothills that tornadoes actually touching down here are extremely rare). So, if my house is ever hit by a tornado (knock on wood) be sure to look for us there.
To give y’all a better idea of what exactly went on with the Windsor tornado, here is a link to information provided by NOAA. One of the pictures shows a house with not much left of a garage; I think we drove by this house.
This morning Noah and I up got up at 4:30am to head north to Windsor to prepare breakfast with the Salvation Army EDS team. We served about 300 servings of eggs, sausage and hash browns to National Guard soldiers, Air Patrol Cadets, Windsor and Greeley police, Windsor Fire and city officials and of course, EDS volunteers and employees. Once breakfast was served we started to prepare another 300 or so lunches that would be given to a nursing home in Windsor as well as soldiers working in the field. We worked in the canteen for about 6 hours this morning and then had the opportunity to take a tour of the damaged areas of the city.
Growing up in earthquake country seeing tornado damage is almost hard to fathom. I have never experienced a tornado and hope I never will. But the their destruction is so random! In an earthquake epicenter there is damage everywhere and it’s very obvious. With tornadoes, it really is hit and miss! The side of town our command post was located had little to no damage. Looking around you would never have guessed there was a tornado. The east side of town was not so fortunate, but at the same, it was not as if everything was demolished or damaged. There was one neighborhood that every house was practically destroyed, and buildings across the street looked as if they were not even touched! The Salvation Army employee that took us and another volunteer around said that about 100 damaged homes were able to be repaired, but another 100 or so were condemned. We saw one house that only had 1 wall of the garage left standing. Most were missing roofs or had damaged roofs. It’s an EDS semi-policy not to bring cameras to events, so we took what we could with our cell phones. I have uploaded the pictures from mine here, and when I get a chance I’ll add the pictures and video Noah took with his phone. It was not what I expected, but then again I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a great experience and one I will never forget.
One thought I had while touring the city, that’s a bit morbid, is that although the tornado was a horrible act of nature and cost so much damage, it will create the workload and jobs needed to help sustain the slowed construction economy. So even in the darkest of situations there is always a silver lining.
Yesterday we had some wild weather in Colorado. For about 8 hours we were under a tornado watch! Yes, even in Boulder County! For about 20 minutes, Northeast Boulder County was even under a tornado warning! A bit unnerving! I called Noah to see where he was (as he drives all over the county for his job) and told him to stay out of Longmont. He was in Superior (Southeast of Boulder) at the time. Although we only had sporadic rain showers, wind and small hail in the city of Boulder, a town in northern Colorado was not so lucky. Windsor, in Weld County (which is Northeast of Boulder County) was hit by what is being called an F-4 tornado. The estimates are that the tornado was a mile wide and was on the ground for 35 miles! I heard on the radio this morning that Weld County has more reported tornadoes than any other county in the country. The only difference is that the tornadoes in Weld rarely touch down, or they are usually small and don’t do any damage.
Last night when we came home from bible study we had a message on our machine from the Salvation Army. We were being called to go up to Windsor to help, mainly with feeding the workers. If you remember back, last year we signed up to be Emergency Disaster Volunteers (EDS). I called the guy back this morning and signed us up to help feed breakfast Sunday morning. It will be an early rise, as we have to be there by 6am, and Windsor is about 40 minutes away, without roadblocks to talk our way through (we do have SA IDs, so hopefully those will help!). This will be our first experience volunteering at a natural disaster event. Pray for the families affected by the tornadoes (there were actually two touchdowns) and for us that we may be a light (and helpful) to the people in Windsor.