Category Archives: Weather, Climate and Science

I feel like the summer is getting late, but I don’t know where the season went. I’m counting down the last few weekends of August and realizing that we won’t be climbing Long’s this year either. I don’t think we’re going to climb in Black Canyon either, which was my goal for this year. Classes are going to be starting soon, and I haven’t bagged a single 14er! I haven’t been mountain biking once! It’s already too late to rent the duckies and float the Poudre as we had been hoping.

I guess this year the priorities just got shifted. I do feel that I’ve made some very important progress in my most recently chosen career. I’m much nearer to finishing my masters thanks to all of the hard work I put in this summer. And for fun stuff, well, my crack climbing is better now than it was last summer, that’s for sure. I’ve explored places in ‘Voo that I’ve been wanting to check out for years now. And of course, the traveling this year has been fantastic.

I may not have been able to check off all of my goals for this summer, but I do feel stronger, somehow. Both mentally and physically. I feel more confidant in my place in Colorado, and more sure of the things and people I love. I suppose all I could ask for is to learn and grow a bit each season, and I think I’m doing great there.

Here’s a shot from one of my dog walks this week. Looks like we’re getting closer to sunrise-shooting-season.

I do love my job. Sometimes it’s stressful. Sometimes I get tired and freak out. But last night, I got to leave the poster session just a little early to “Measure the diffusive and reflected longer wavelengths of radiation.” In other words, “to take pictures of the pretty sunset.” Scientifically, of course.

I’ve spent my week at a team meeting for my advisor’s largest research project. It’s been a great meeting. On Tuesday, I gave my first public science talk: to the whole conference! Close to 100 of the best, and most famous, climate and cloud modelers in the world sat there and watched me explain the MJO in the most interesting and least complicated way that I could. From what I hear, it was a resounding success. It’s sooo good for your ego to have so many people come up and tell you how much they enjoyed your talk. I feel really proud right now.

But also really tired. I’ve got a late night tonight and then a stressful day tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to this weekend right now!

In honor of the cloud modeling meeting, here’s a shot of the Colorado sky this afternoon.

Well, last night we had somewhere between 2 and 5 inches of rain in about 2 hours, and Fort Collins saw another series of flash floods. The last time this happend several people died, and the town had to rebuild the drainage system to better handle these large amounts of rain.

• As far as I’ve read this morning, nobody got hurt or killed last night. Some houses were damaged and traffic was definitely snarled. There’s a nice story in the Coloradoan.
• Here’s a link to the storm reports for the area.
• And here’s a link to a precipitation map of the state. You might have to choose the date “8/3/07” to see the heavy rain event. It’s really interesting how localized our precipitation is out here. It was like one storm that just sat and dumped on our town
• Mark and I weathered the storm just fine. Our house stayed dry, but the grassy drainage in front of our building was filled to the brim last night. There’s a photo below! For comparison, here’s a shot of what our house normally looks like. With the water up to the bottom of the bridge, we estimate that the pool was almost 6ft deep in some places!

Getting everything together for the trip to Italy right now. There’s so much to do before you leave the country! But I’m really excited now!

Here’s a shot from another great sunset we had this week. Keep an eye on the blog in the next few days, I’m hoping to be able to post an occasional shot from the trip while we’re abroad.

So, last night Mark and I were hanging out, when we heard the house creek and a weird howl creeped in from the gathering dusk. We peaked our head out the door and saw a wall of dust blow by. An unfortunate woman was walking her dog near our house, and she ducked into or alcove for cover while yelling “What the h*@$ is going on??” At first I thought it was a straight-up dust storm. But then the cloud blew into view, and we were hit with the next wall. That’s when the idea of a dry microburst hit me. And a small rock.

Quite the field of boundary layer cumulus this morning. These are pretty rare for Colorado. The weather has been so great lately, that I’ve been able to get back to riding my bike to work. Wow, I am sore!

I’ve been working a bit on the site lately. You’ll notice a more fine-tuned category list on the side-bar to the left. I’m not completely done with the re-org, but I should be soon. I’m also working with Dylan to update and debug the Adventure Map. If you haven’t played with this toy much, I strongly suggest it. It’s pretty darn cool.

On Saturday, Mark is leaving for Japan for a week. I’m hoping to get him blogging about that trip too. It’s going to be neat to be able to put some pins on the map in Japan and then Italy in July!!

Our plans to climb on Devil’s Tower this weekend got canceled because of the storm that blew through. Mark and I were both disappointed, but we didn’t really have the money to pay for the weekend right now (have to replace the laptop). It was nice to stick around at home for a quiet weekend, get laundry caught up, vacuum, and get some work done.