Winter Days

Snow on my woodpile on Thursday, December 21, 2006, when Denver, Colorado Springs, and the eastern plains of Colorado were in the second day of a huge blizzard.

Here in the Upper Arkansas River Valley, 120 miles SW of Denver and due west of Colorado Springs, we'd gotten six inches of snow on Tuesday night, no new snow on Wednesday, and just a piercingly cold north wind on Thursday. In the cities, snow had started on Wednesday and continued through Thursday. Our wind was from the north because of counterclockwise rotation around the low pressure area, which by then had moved eastward near the northeastern corner of New Mexico.

We had only wind that day because we're in a rain shadow from every direction except south. In other words, we had escaped the big blizzard that shut down Denver and eastern Colorado on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. This is my shed, and the base of Mt. Princeton beyond, late on Wednesday when the blizzard was at its peak in Denver.