Mild winters. Right. The Western US is in the grips of an arctic weather pattern right now. Officially, the low for Fort Collins yesterday (Dec 15) was eight below zero (F). But one weather station was reporting 15 below zero at about 9 am yesterday. For some reason, I find weather more and more fascinating, so I looked around the west (you can just click on points on the National Weather Service Map) for the coldest I could find. The lowest I saw was 35 below zero in Glasgow, Montana. That's cold.
The cold weather blew in on Sunday. On Saturday it was balmy (around 50) and sunny. So Cassie and I went out for our first bike ride together. We explored some of the bike paths here in Fort Collins, of which there are many. The city is really committed to bike transportation. After snows, the bike paths get plowed quickly and somebody de-ices the paths everyday (it may be volunteers). In addition, on the cities website there is a link to information on how to continue commuting by bike through the winter. Pretty cool. Anyway, on our ride we made our way up to the Poudre River Trail. The Poudre River is the focus of my work right now, so it's nice to see it. The trail follows the river toward the mountains and ends in Laporte, a little town northeast of Fort Collins. The scenery, as you might imagine, was gorgeous.
 |
| From Poudre Ride Dec 2008 |
 |
| From Poudre Ride Dec 2008 |
 |
| From Poudre Ride Dec 2008 |
 |
| From Poudre Ride Dec 2008 |
(that's an old irrigation viaduct)
We had hoped to do a larger loop, including some roads in the foothills, but the new arctic weather change started blowing in. The winds began to howl and we were practically assaulted by tumble weeds! We could see the storm approaching
 |
| From Poudre Ride Dec 2008 |
By Sunday morning it was zero degrees, with about 2-3 inches of new snow. I took the opportunity to go hiking at Horsetooth Mountain. I was so bundled up that I was hot on my way up the mountain. Mine were the first tracks up the trail, so it was a pleasure. But it was too hard to take pictures with big gore-tex mittens on, and too cold to take the mittens off, so no pictures.
The bitter cold really isn't so bad. I'd take this weather--dry and zero degrees--over typical Baltimore winter weather (35 and wet) any day. Minus 15 may be a bit much, though. The dogs certainly don't like it, as the cold snow hurts their paws too much for them to walk. They're getting cabin fever so it's probably time for some dog booties.
That's all for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment