It's a lovely night on the prairie...

denverpilot

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DenverPilot
The drive home. Two hours ago.

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And the real snow and wind didn't start until midnight local. Ha.

Power went out around 8.

Driving home I saw these awesome and fascinating not flashes that lit up the road and countryside for miles near where one of our volunteer FD folks had blocked off a road. Figured it was explosions of some sort and they were probably not having a lot of fun in the weather.

One friend on the FD later confirmed it was high tension lines arcing.

Truly was something beautiful and strange to behold. Blizzard conditions. Doing the "drive at warp speed" Star Wars streaks thing in the headlights and then zaaaaaap for many seconds at a time. Each time a different color diffused and bright enough you didn't need headlights for the whole time it was doing it. Turquoise, Yellow-white, Orange-y, and one brilliant white. Amazing. Don't even know how to describe it. Multiple arcs lasting multiple seconds each time and lighting up the whole road all the way to horizon, the plunged back into our usual total darkness with no street lights and two ruts in the snow to keep plodding through in 4WD.

Anyway. Basement is slowly cooling. Down to 63F and 56 knot gusts expected through 9AM. Once it's daylight I'll be out dragging the generator to the house from the RV trailer and setting up temp power for the pellet stove. Should be lovely.

Internet is still up via the office UPS running the router and the iPhone. And of course our whopping 3G cell coverage when that quits. Haha.

Probably all be melted by Wednesday. Hahaha.

Wheeee. Winter is here.

Wind is blowing much harder out here that at APA but here's the METAR. Heh.

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"""Probably all be melted by Wednesday. Hahaha. """


Wednesday........May 11th 2016!!

I hope you get your power back soon.
 
Looks like a night that calls for a big wood stove, hickory firewood, a warm dog, and maybe a six-pack of your favorite beverage.

This morning looks nasty at KDEN.
 
Shouldn't interfere with the Monkey Race, RIGHT?!?
 
Glad I have the next two days off. We didn't lose power here either.
 
Last night, and overnight, KC had thunderstorms. It rained pretty hard all night, and is still going. It probably will last until mid afternoon. But the temps are in the 60s. Pretty unusual for us to have that kind of wx this far into Nov.
 
The big upslope didn't upslope much here (Nate's 330@35). Swept around the south side of town, started to curl a bit north and then decided "Nope. Gonna pound on Nate and Co for a while". We had rain all afternoon and most of the evening, low clouds this morning, wind calm, and now I'm sitting in sunshine.
 
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The big upslope didn't upslope much here (Nate's 330@35). Swept around the south side of town, started to curl a bit north and then decided "Nope. Gonna pound on Nate and Co for a while". We had rain all afternoon and most of the evening, low clouds this morning, wind calm, and no I'm sitting in sunshine.

I'm just north of KAPA, had to shovel off the patio so the dog would go outside. Winds last night were "brisk" but nothing right now.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]KAPA [/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]171753Z 32005K[/FONT]
 
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Peering out the window I might have some 18' drifts but not so much in other places. The wind has died down from a couple hours ago and there are still a few flakes in the air.
 
Yet another reminder I need to get new tires on the front of my car
 
We didn't get a lick of it up here in foco!

Windy as hell though, but that's to be expected, after all Wyoming sucks and Boulder blows;)
 
I miss Colorado (Front Range) weather!
 
Moooooooooore, baby! Gimme some good runs at A Basin and Keystone for Turkey day. Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' bout.
 
Moooooooooore, baby! Gimme some good runs at A Basin and Keystone for Turkey day. Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' bout.
Good run at Keystone...oxymoron. Great runs at ABasin. Kiddy runs at Keystone. Altho I do like the 2 mile Schoolmarm when I'm tired.
 
mountains didn't get a lot from this system, relatively speaking
 

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There was more snow than I thought. More than any storm last year.

I would say the drifts were about 20" and where the wind had blown, about 8".
 
Good run at Keystone...oxymoron. Great runs at ABasin. Kiddy runs at Keystone. Altho I do like the 2 mile Schoolmarm when I'm tired.

I'm glad you(and most others) don't know where they are. :yes:
 
Had to shovel. I usually pack snow down with my car but I was pretty sure I would high-center it with this much. BTDT...
 

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Sun comes out, most of the backyard (which had 6-8 inches of snow this morning) is almost gone.

Welcome to Colorado.
 
Sun comes out, most of the backyard (which had 6-8 inches of snow this morning) is almost gone.

Welcome to Colorado.

I'm sorry to hear that your backyard is almost gone...

:D
 
Looks like a night that calls for a big wood stove, hickory firewood, a warm dog, and maybe a six-pack of your favorite beverage.



This morning looks nasty at KDEN.


It was. Winds didn't die down until about 10 AM here.

Shouldn't interfere with the Monkey Race, RIGHT?!?


Not so far.

Somebody needs a generator.....


Have one. It was out in the fifth wheel pass through. Needed daylight and lower winds to go get it. Ran that little Honda 3000 all day to get the pellet stove going. Worked well. Also decided to use it to chill the fridge and freezer back down a couple of times rather than play to "move it all to a snowbank" game.

The big upslope didn't upslope much here (Nate's 330@35). Swept around the south side of town, started to curl a bit north and then decided "Nope. Gonna pound on Nate and Co for a while". We had rain all afternoon and most of the evening, low clouds this morning, wind calm, and now I'm sitting in sunshine.


It pounded us. Mostly wind but the wind made for nasty drifts. See below.

Moooooooooore, baby! Gimme some good runs at A Basin and Keystone for Turkey day. Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' bout.


Everyone knows Copper and Steamboat beat all of those. ;-)

Good run at Keystone...oxymoron. Great runs at ABasin. Kiddy runs at Keystone. Altho I do like the 2 mile Schoolmarm when I'm tired.


LOL

There was more snow than I thought. More than any storm last year.



I would say the drifts were about 20" and where the wind had blown, about 8".


We had higher drifts. During the night / early morning I wondered if the rooftop tower on the garage would buckle, but it held. Interesting noises from the garage roof when it's blowing that hard and everything is frozen.

Had to shovel. I usually pack snow down with my car but I was pretty sure I would high-center it with this much. BTDT...


Got you beat... See below. Haha.

Sun comes out, most of the backyard (which had 6-8 inches of snow this morning) is almost gone.

Welcome to Colorado.


Not gone here (yet).

Here was stuck vehicle #1. Early AM seeing if we could get Karen in to work. Not a chance. That's 30 yards down the driveway from the parking area / garage.

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Three more hours of wind amazingly dug itself out of being high centered but piled snow around it up past the running boards on the downwind side.

So. After hours of beating on the drifts with the tractor...

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Yielded stuck vehicle number 2. While I was packing down that last 30 hard won feet.

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Funny thing is, see the car going by on our road, teasing me? It's passable. I'm basically trapped in my own driveway.

Lessons learned:

The tractor is too f***ing small and weak for this crap. I need a plow attachment on a truck. With a nice warm cab.

Three point hitch snow blowers are almost worthless. I didn't buy it but don't tell the next sucker I sell it off to. Hahah.

Don't let the right front tire go in the ditch. Haha. (Well I knew that one already and said a couple of choice words when I did it.)

Don't kid yourself and not keep the ridiculous fuel supply you had LAST year when nothing happened like this, thinking that it isn't necessary. Now I'm watching fuel gauges like a hawk.

Either I'll call the across the road neighbor and hike through the drifts to get more diesel, or I'll play the siphon game from the Dodge if the tractor quits tomorrow. Pretty much no choice to keep using it. Push behind snow thrower would do it over many hours of work, but not enough go juice for that.

Don't put off putting in a proper transfer switch at the load center for a genset feed for a few choice circuits. Some lights on both floors and the fridge and the furnace and the well pump would be the minimum. Ideal would be whole house genset and a second propane tank for it.

Power was out about 8 hours exactly. 8P-8P or so. Much nicer sitting here with the furnace running and the TV on, awaiting tomorrow's return to driveway clearing hell, although the pellet stove was fine for heat.

Oh well. No plan survives the war, and the plan wasn't followed properly this year anyway, so can't blame the plan.
 
Oh and my fence acted as a snow fence. Now I know why the neighbor across the road puts one almost down the center of his property. If you place it right, the "wave" of cleared area behind it, can be the road itself.
 
Oh and my fence acted as a snow fence. Now I know why the neighbor across the road puts one almost down the center of his property. If you place it right, the "wave" of cleared area behind it, can be the road itself.

In this case just move the "driveway" and your plowing is cut down to just doing the road access.
 
It was a lovely day on the island too, we got half of our yearly rain fall, driven by 40 mile per hour winds.

But it's calming down.

but I didn't have to shovel a drop. I did clean the street storm drain twice. :)
 
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In this case just move the "driveway" and your plowing is cut down to just doing the road access.


Won't work. Left of the drives is a drainage ditch that feeds the culvert under the road you can't see right now.
 
Everyone knows Copper and Steamboat beat all of those. ;-)

Three more hours of wind amazingly dug itself out of being high centered but piled snow around it up past the running boards on the downwind side.

Yielded stuck vehicle number 2. While I was packing down that last 30 hard won feet.

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Funny thing is, see the car going by on our road, teasing me? It's passable. I'm basically trapped in my own driveway.

Lessons learned:

The tractor is too f***ing small and weak for this crap. I need a plow attachment on a truck. With a nice warm cab.

Three point hitch snow blowers are almost worthless. I didn't buy it but don't tell the next sucker I sell it off to. Hahah.

Don't let the right front tire go in the ditch. Haha. (Well I knew that one already and said a couple of choice words when I did it.)

Don't kid yourself and not keep the ridiculous fuel supply you had LAST year when nothing happened like this, thinking that it isn't necessary. Now I'm watching fuel gauges like a hawk.

Either I'll call the across the road neighbor and hike through the drifts to get more diesel, or I'll play the siphon game from the Dodge if the tractor quits tomorrow. Pretty much no choice to keep using it. Push behind snow thrower would do it over many hours of work, but not enough go juice for that.

Don't put off putting in a proper transfer switch at the load center for a genset feed for a few choice circuits. Some lights on both floors and the fridge and the furnace and the well pump would be the minimum. Ideal would be whole house genset and a second propane tank for it.

Oh well. No plan survives the war, and the plan wasn't followed properly this year anyway, so can't blame the plan.

Ya know, if I was 30 years younger, I'd go to Copper or MJWP, maybe even Steamboat. But, that's the way it is, and no one catches me anyway. Well, maybe those little ski race rats in the club. Little rats anyway. :wink2:

I thought you knew about moving snow? Guess I was wrong. Last time I'll be made fun of for my old 8N on chains with a 6' blade. I'm still gonna put the loader on the front to pile it up out of the way. :yesnod:
 
Yup, that's pretty much it. One of my workers couldn't make it out of Aurora. The rest of the crew was on the job...but you forgot the scratch-n-sniff for Greeley...
 
Yup, that's pretty much it. One of my workers couldn't make it out of Aurora. The rest of the crew was on the job...but you forgot the scratch-n-sniff for Greeley...

Congrats on the 10,000th post! :goofy:
 
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