A July Thundershower

We have been in a very unusual weather pattern for Colorado, where we have had beautiful mornings and early afternoons, followed by severe weather in the late afternoon. This has gone on for about three weeks, and has even included tornadoes, as indicated in an earlier post here. We also had about $13,000 in damage to the house, including the roof, all from hail. We are working to get that repaired, but it is a long process.

This afternoon's storm was a nice thunderstorm, not so severe, but gave us a good downpour and a lot of rolling thunder. I grabbed the trusty Olympus LS-10, and picked up a few seconds of sound. Below is some of it, and you can hear the rainfall, the thunder, and a neighbor's windchime. Enjoy!



Edited to add: This is the first audio file I have placed on this blog using a different host. I had been using podbean.com for hosting audio files and creating an embedded player. This one is using the Internet Archive at www.archive.com. They can host text, audio, video, and many other types of multimedia files. Their embedded player you see above has a volume control which is lacking on PodBean's. The Internet Archive also creates not only an embeddable player, but it allows you to choose a license for your files. The original file I uploaded was MP3 format, but they also create other versions automatically. My file resulted in not only the MP3, but also Ogg Vorbis, ZIP, M3U, and metadata files. It is totally free, and I highly recommend it. There is nothing wrong with PodBean, but I am liking the Internet Archive a lot!

Hail & High Water

Two hours ago, it was a beautiful sunny day. But all of a sudden, the sky got dark as night, sirens started going off, and marble-sized hail pelted us for about 30 minutes. I have never heard such a noise as the roof was being pounded and the wind and lightning was running rampant. It turns out that multiple funnel clouds are dropping all around us, and we are under a tornado warning.

It got so noisy and loud that Molly the Dog and I went to the basement for a few minutes during the worst of it. Here's hoping that this won't cause problems with my mother-in-law's flight in to Denver from Pittsburgh this afternoon.

I don't ever get scared of storms, but all the noise of this one did get my pulse racing a bit! I also hope the roof is okay. I suppose we shall find out.

Treecicles

On Spring 2009 Blizzard day plus one, we also have beautiful icicles forming on the branches of trees as our big, life-giving sun sends its warming rays 93-million miles across space to create a beautiful scene for us right here in Colorado, USA, planet Earth!

Play Misty for Me

One thing that I didn't see too very often when I lived other places where it snowed, was the sudden evaporation of the snow into the air. Usually, it would turn into a dirty slush, followed by melting into dirty water.

While we do get some of that, our thin air at 6000 feet above sea level, coupled with the general dryness of the atmosphere here in Colorado, and we usually see something entirely different. Today, as good old Mister Sun has started warming us up after yesterday's blizzard conditions, the snow has started evaporating back into the air from whence it fell. In these photos I took while going to grab some lunch, you can clearly see the new clouds forming as the snow evaporates from the road surfaces which have been plowed and are now warming up. These "baby clouds" will rise into the air again, and bring some other place their rain or snow, as the cycle continues. It is fun to watch it in action.

Anybody Need Some Snow?

Some sun and blue sky is starting to displace the storm clouds that have moved into our neighboring states of Kansas and Oklahoma. And even though we had winds during the blizzard of up to 50 MPH, the snow still got to pile up pretty high.

The snow on the driveway was as deep, and deeper in the drifts, as this on the picnic table. And it isn't our light, dry, fluffy Colorado winter snow either. This is our wet, heavy springtime snow that breaks your back to shovel. Yeah, I'm complaining. So what! One thing is pretty cool...look how the snow on the chair arm in the foreground meets that on the table.

At least we have a break until the next snows move in next Monday and Wednesday.

Blizzard Robin

With the recent temperatures near 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the flora and fauna must be a bit confused by the blizzard that hit Colorado today. A few minutes ago I went to let Molly the Dog out, and saw a patch of orange in one of the pine trees. Upon closer examination, I saw it was a fat little robin, a sign of spring, huddled up on a branch of the tree. This poor thing was doing its best to keep warm. It makes me glad that I refilled the feeders with seed a few days ago.

Click on the picture for a larger version.