Interesting Forecast.
- Thread starter JL Gacke
- Start date
Yesterday broke the record in Denver @ 101°. Now they have released a winter storm watch for 3-6" snow possible for I25 corridor starting late monday thru early wednesday.. I've seen some crazy flips since I moved here, but this is something else. Also...back into 80s by end of week.
We'll be spending today and tomorrow saying our farewells to our garden and trees.
We'll be spending today and tomorrow saying our farewells to our garden and trees.
I've been watching this since it first showed up on the weather last week...at the beginning it didn't look too bad, but each subsequent day, it seemed like it got alittle stronger/worse.
I was camping over the weekend, when I got home yesterday the area was smoky & it was ashing(is that actually a word?) just a bit. Seeing the latest forecast, looks like a good chunk of today will be spent out in the yard...going to look through the garden/veggies, protect the plants with lots of unripe that I want to save, strip everything where the plant doesn't have many (then let them ripen in the basement).
Then I have a small fishpond and in it are guppies (small semi-tropical fish), not sure what I'm going to do yet - try to cover/protect it, or bring the fish back inside to an aquarium (something I'd be doing later this month anyway, but its a time-consuming task)
As for the trees...I lost one in a derecho this spring, another met its fate via chainsaw(had bugs anyway), I guess if the snow takes down any others, that's even more firewood (hopefully anything that falls avoids any house/fence/etc damage)
The videocamera is charged & ready just incase I wish to make a 'first snow of the season' vid...
Attached is latest forecast:
I was camping over the weekend, when I got home yesterday the area was smoky & it was ashing(is that actually a word?) just a bit. Seeing the latest forecast, looks like a good chunk of today will be spent out in the yard...going to look through the garden/veggies, protect the plants with lots of unripe that I want to save, strip everything where the plant doesn't have many (then let them ripen in the basement).
Then I have a small fishpond and in it are guppies (small semi-tropical fish), not sure what I'm going to do yet - try to cover/protect it, or bring the fish back inside to an aquarium (something I'd be doing later this month anyway, but its a time-consuming task)
As for the trees...I lost one in a derecho this spring, another met its fate via chainsaw(had bugs anyway), I guess if the snow takes down any others, that's even more firewood (hopefully anything that falls avoids any house/fence/etc damage)
The videocamera is charged & ready just incase I wish to make a 'first snow of the season' vid...
Attached is latest forecast:
Attachments
Reminder to locals to at least drain your sprinkler manifolds. No need to blow out systems, but protect the outdoor exposed plumbing where you can.
@Marc R. O'Leary:
Yep, deff an important step to remember.
Something that's already on my to-do for today..
Yep, deff an important step to remember.
Something that's already on my to-do for today..
Another recommendation: this morning I had to blow all the ash off my outdoor furniture before it gets wet and stains everything. Something to consider. I have all my water systems sorted now. Garden next and after dinner batten down the hatches for the high winds and temp drops. 2020.
I live near Lamar CO which set a record at 107.6°F yesterday, the highest temp ever recorded in the month of September. Snow Wednesday morning with wind gusts up to about 55mph.
Got my garden gone through & veggies picked even if they weren't ripe (plus a few plants I wanted to keep covered with a tarp)
Potted plans got gone through, the ones I wanted to save went to the garage or shed, the rest were stripped of their veggies & left outside.
Guess its time to say 'goodbye garden'
Sprinkler system turned off/de-pressurized/drained, garden hoses disconnected.
Guppies brought in from pond (some didn't make it though). Ended up draining quite a bit of water to get them all...at first I was thinking that its something I'd prefer not do, but then on 2nd thought figured it was probably a good thing, since I'd be giving a good water-change/cleaning (doing so is also removing ash-related contaminants too) for the larger carp-type fish in the upper section of the pond where they will remain.
--all this pretty much took the entire day--
@Marc R. O'Leary:
I wouldn't have even thought of that. I looked, but the ash we got was really nothing more than just a bit of dust around. (I did notice it ashing very lightly again today)
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Got windy for a bit this evening (nothing real strong), then stopped, then started again & is still going...plus its deff starting to cool off.
Potted plans got gone through, the ones I wanted to save went to the garage or shed, the rest were stripped of their veggies & left outside.
Guess its time to say 'goodbye garden'
Sprinkler system turned off/de-pressurized/drained, garden hoses disconnected.
Guppies brought in from pond (some didn't make it though). Ended up draining quite a bit of water to get them all...at first I was thinking that its something I'd prefer not do, but then on 2nd thought figured it was probably a good thing, since I'd be giving a good water-change/cleaning (doing so is also removing ash-related contaminants too) for the larger carp-type fish in the upper section of the pond where they will remain.
--all this pretty much took the entire day--
@Marc R. O'Leary:
I wouldn't have even thought of that. I looked, but the ash we got was really nothing more than just a bit of dust around. (I did notice it ashing very lightly again today)
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Got windy for a bit this evening (nothing real strong), then stopped, then started again & is still going...plus its deff starting to cool off.
Well this thing fizzled into nothing but cold temps and a dusting of snow. Hopefully the snow they got in the hills will help with the fire, but all this system did for Metro and the plains was kill peoples gardens. Hopefully the farming crops held up. Last thing we need is more potential crop shortages after the Iowa derecho.
Pretty impressive! Up to 4" around Denver - and 14" in the mountains...
Well that...and the widespread nearly 1.0" of QPE to help with the drought. I'd say this system was at least helpful with that. Society doesn't depend on individuals' gardens, so that's just a personal issue. I don't have a garden and my few plants fit nicely inside my apartment, so I have sustained zero damage from this.
Oh I agree the moisture we received was more than welcome. My commentary was more on the general apocalypse mindset everyone seems to get when snow is in the forecast. Obviously the temperature change was the big news, but they really pumped up the potential snowfall numbers for metro and none of it happened. The precip should have been the big story but rain isn't headline grabbing, despite extreme drought.
I believe I got somewhere around 3"-4" (Some of it melted before it was done snowing, so coulda even been slightly more. So I'm not really sure of the total, or what they use when calculating official numbers)
Unfortunately the link @rdale posted doesn't work for me (blank space where the map should be) it'd be interesting to see what they show.
I drove around a bit near my area after work, and saw plenty of small broken branches on trees, but only a couple large ones, so damage appears to be minimal.
I had some power flickers during the storm, but it never went out.
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I agree, the loss of gardens is sad, but I think things like this quote from the Cameron Peak Fire InciWeb page really show some of the good that came from the storm
Unfortunately the link @rdale posted doesn't work for me (blank space where the map should be) it'd be interesting to see what they show.
I drove around a bit near my area after work, and saw plenty of small broken branches on trees, but only a couple large ones, so damage appears to be minimal.
I had some power flickers during the storm, but it never went out.
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I agree, the loss of gardens is sad, but I think things like this quote from the Cameron Peak Fire InciWeb page really show some of the good that came from the storm
The forecast was spot-on correct here.
I peruse the InciWeb page often as well James. The Cameron Peak fire is about 45 miles northwest of here. (InciWeb the Incident Information System)
I totally agree the firefighters and residents really needed this break. Reports say Cameron Peak received 8" to 14" of snow.
If I recall correctly, the fire grew from around 32K acres to 102K acres in about a day and a half just prior to the snow.
We had large ash raining here for two days. It looked like storm clouds raining virga low overhead though I suspect the ethereal sheets were actually waves of ash that looked like virga. It was pretty amazing. Putting aside the sick feeling of destruction for just a moment and not to be insensitive, it had some of the aura of storm chasing. That tense thought of what's going to happen next? I've been through some natural disasters and as awful as they've been, I still always have a sense of awe at what the destructive forces of floods, fires, volcanoes, tornadoes and others are capable of.
I peruse the InciWeb page often as well James. The Cameron Peak fire is about 45 miles northwest of here. (InciWeb the Incident Information System)
I totally agree the firefighters and residents really needed this break. Reports say Cameron Peak received 8" to 14" of snow.
If I recall correctly, the fire grew from around 32K acres to 102K acres in about a day and a half just prior to the snow.
We had large ash raining here for two days. It looked like storm clouds raining virga low overhead though I suspect the ethereal sheets were actually waves of ash that looked like virga. It was pretty amazing. Putting aside the sick feeling of destruction for just a moment and not to be insensitive, it had some of the aura of storm chasing. That tense thought of what's going to happen next? I've been through some natural disasters and as awful as they've been, I still always have a sense of awe at what the destructive forces of floods, fires, volcanoes, tornadoes and others are capable of.