I love it here 2009

Monday, June 15, 2009

tornados

Today we saw a tornado come out of the sky and it reportedly touched down a few times about 12-15 miles from our home. A friend of mine, who grew up in tornado country was here today. She noticed the unusual clouds. We get cross winds all the time here, but not the distinct swirling we saw today. We could see the swirling clouds above us and tuned in to the weather station to see what the deal was. We had heard tornado warning on the radio for East of Denver (Denver station), but none for us. So we turned on the tv to the newly acquired digital weather station (no cable or dish). The reporter was just saying that a tornado was sighted just about 2 miles east of the ElPaso county Elbert county line. We rushed out to the front porch and sure enough there was a funnel cloud coming down just on the other side of the trees. WOW! No news on if anything was damaged. It seemed to move out pretty quick and the reporter agreed. So, a tornado but not a big twister. Anyway, pretty cool. We are fortunate that our air is cool enough that a tornado has never set down up on the divide. It was frosty today.

We have been getting a lot of rain and the frogs are back in full force of song. Dave says they burry themselves in the mud and wait until it gets wet to come out. That is a ton of hybernating! Someone recently mentioned that this seemed odd for June weather. We got to thinking about it. It was like this Dave's first summer as a river guide (1992), it was like this the year we got married (outside at Glen Eyrie) in 1995, it was like this the year we built the house (2003), and it was like this the year we moved in (2004) and now in 2009. I guess we noted these years because of the events in our lives that were effected by the weather. There may be others. I think this is normal for June in the Rockies. :) In fact it is a bit light compared to some of those years. In 2004 we had and electrical outage every week for a couple months due to thunder and lightning. Last summer was awfully dry, so we are thankful. Just a little reminder that it is still Spring in the Rockies, even though it is summer nearly everywhere else, at least for a little longer.

I love it here.