Weekend Plans Post: Daylight Saving Time and The Storm Of The Century
I got an email asking me if I was going to write Weekend a day early, given the snowstorm that was coming.
I got on the Google (because I had heard of no snowstorm) and saw that, yes, a storm was coming to Fort Collins and surrounding areas but, you know, I live all the way down here in Colorado Springs. I don’t live in North Colorado Springs either. My mom lives in North Colorado Springs and sometimes she calls us saying that her house got half a foot of snow and we tell her stuff like “yeah, we had some flurries”.
Management lives in Monument and there are days when we get an inch or two and they explain that they are pretty much buried.
This snowstorm, on Monday, looked like it was going to hit Fort Collins pretty hard but, for us, it predicted either rain or snow or something inbetween. The “Wintry Mix”.
I wasn’t worried.
Now? Well, I’m still not particularly worried. Fort Collins looks like it’s going to get about a yard of snow. Boulder? 50 inches. Okay. That’s pretty cool. The ski resorts? Well, this is the one they’ve been waiting for. Get your lift tickets now, Wednesday is going to be the best skiing you’ve seen in years.
Colorado Springs? About 6″. Okay. That’s a good, solid snow… but, honestly, nothing to really write home about. That’ll be the second or third half a foot this season. The same report predicting the snow predicts the sun comes out on Monday… which means the snow is gone by Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.
In any case, as prep, we got THE BIG DELIVERY from Costco. Bottled Water, those little lunchmeat/cheese wraps, tortellini, Hecho en Mexico Coca-Cola, and Easter Candy. A ton of other stuff too. As we stocked it away, I couldn’t help but think “next time we get stuff from Costco, it’ll be because we went to the Costco ourselves” and I smiled. The last big delivery. Fingers crossed. And if it snows more than predicted? Well, we have food to get us to the sun coming back out and melting it all away.
Part of me hopes that Monday might be a snow day because, jeez. They’re stealing an hour from us again.
I’ve complained over and over and over again about Daylight Saving Time and I’m running out of things to complain about it. “How are we still doing this?” is my favorite starting point. It’s also possible to point to productivity stats, health stats, mortality stats, and so on and so forth but… Well, at least we’re still in quarantine, right? Maybe Daylight Saving Time won’t be so bad when the commute gets shortened to two flights of stairs.
Anyway, this weekend is going to be spent buckling down and being glad we don’t have to go anywhere. Going outside periodically to sweep the accumulated snow off of the sidewalk and getting back inside and getting warm again. Maybe enjoy those little lunchmeat/cheese wraps.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Tiger is skeptical of this ‘Mommy going back to work’ talk.” Taken by Maribou.)
The NWS forecast for Fort Collins is finally starting to be useful. Instead of 5-to-30 inches, they’ve narrowed it to 20-to-30 inches. Unless the storm tracks 50 miles north of the forecast path, in which case we get less and Cheyenne gets buried. Anyway, we figure on staying home until Monday afternoon at the earliest.
My wife’s first Covid vaccination is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.Report
NPR did a story about how 10,000 shots were going to have to be rescheduled over the weekend. I winced.Report
My spring break is next week. (It unofficially starts for me at 2:30 pm when I walk out of my graduate-level class for today).
My plan for tomorrow is to go back (for the first time in a bit more than a year!) to the big natural-foods store in Sherman. I had not been going because I mostly had not been going to Sherman, or the rare times I did, the “necessary” places were the only places I went. But I’m out of a lot of things they had that I enjoyed (and I hope they still have). They also were advertising what looked like seltzer water but root beer flavored and I really have to try that. (I like root beer but try to limit sugar, and if they can make unsweetened seltzer sufficiently approximate root beer, I will be happy).
Not sure where else I might go, but I feel like I want to go somewhere else while I’m down there.
But yeah. Gonna sleep as late as I need to tomorrow morning, not going to do any grading tomorrow (for a change). I will be working next week (trying to finish at least a draft of a manuscript, and trying to plan summer research, which will involve at least one trip out to a field site).Report
It sounds like it will be nice to visit a big store and wander the aisles knowing “hey, I’m vaccinated”. I hope your shoulders unbunch somewhere between grabbing the cart and the end of produce.Report
The 2020 high school football season starts next week in IL, so I’ll be doing a little prep for that. I’ve participated in some ridiculous endeavors in my day, and I even voted for Ross Perot once, but this one might take the cake.
Other than that, just chilling and waiting for a shot.Report
We have moved from “we personally know elderly people that have gotten the shot in Colorado” to “we personally know people our age that have gotten the shot in Colorado”.
3/21 is the day that it opens up for People Of Size. Keeping them crossed.Report
We celebrated my younger son’s birthday yesterday. I keep saying he was the first kid to have TWO birthdays ruined by the pandemic. 3/11 is his birthday and we had family pull out of dinner last year as Covid concerns began mounting and by the weekend, he friend party was “postponed” and then “cancelled”. Four of the five grandparents are fully vaccinated, all three parents have gotten both doses (I’m not yet at the 2 week mark though), and we kept the celebration outdoors in surprisingly warm weather. As happy as he was, I think the grandparents were the happiest to just do something that felt normal with people they loved.
We do a friend birthday parade on Saturday and will then see the cousins.
ETA: Grandparents were vaccinated based on age-eligibility. Boys’ mom was vaccinated based on work in health care field. Girlfriend and I were vaccinated base on work in child care/education.Report
Oh, that’s a bummer for the little guy.
There are so many silly little things to mark the passing of one of the dumbest years on record. That’s a particularly happy/sad one.
It’s delightful that the grandparents can come, though! That’s great!Report
A Year Without Kids Birthdays is not a fun thing to say. But hope lies on the horizon. And maybe this will push the reset button on over-the-top kids parties and everyone will be jazzed for pizza in the park again.Report
Lots of extreme weather events in recent years. Wonder why that is.Report
Butt sex.
Definitely, butt sex.Report
They talk about this in Revelation.Report
Storm Warning just got extended to Monday.Report
OTOH, expected upper range for Boulder and Fort Collins, excluding up in the foothills, dropped to about 24 inches. Possibly more, but the probable range has decreased. 24″ is well out of the “storm of the century” scope, being several inches below the big one in 2003.
On the gripping hand, in 2003 I was responsible for a double driveway, 60 feet of sidewalk, and a wooden deck. My estimate then was 13-15 tons of snow that had to be moved. (In my youth, I was a scrawny kid in NW Iowa; my shoveling technique is impeccable.) This time, I’m responsible for our modest front porch and about eight feet of sidewalk.
I’ll post pictures.Report
When I went out for my jog earlier, the sky was overcast but not out of the ordinary.
After my shower and lunch, the sky was overcast and felt like a Wallace Stevens poem.
While pizza was being reheated in the microwave, I took out the trash and recycling and, though it didn’t look like it was snowing yet, my bald head felt the little tiny sparks of ice that said that snow was coming.
So… maybe it shifted a little.Report
Woke up, ran to the window… it rained last night.
Bummer.Report
I blame The Weather Channel. They only get large numbers of eyeballs if it’s going to be a disaster of biblical proportions. They hit a mother lode last month in Texas. Not for the right reasons: they said it would be cold, they didn’t say natural gas production would drop 30-50% and take big chunks of the electric grid with it for days. They really want record snowfall for the Front Range. Even the WaPost and NYTimes have been covering their asses this time with stories about “feet of snow in Denver,” just in case it’s the disaster TWC is selling.
The upper possibilities for this storm have consistently been a bit lower than the 2003 storm. You remember what happened in Denver and Boulder and Fort Collins in 2003? Scattered power outages due to downed branches, everyone had to stay home for three days, and the weight of the snow tore a hole in the spiffy roof at the airport. The worst part about staying at home for us? The then 16-year-old girl who was losing her spring break.
When I first mailed you asking about doing the weekend post early, it was so I could whine about how useless the NWS forecast of 5-to-30 inches of snow was. How to plan a weekend if you don’t know if it will be a minor inconvenience or a major one? The forecasts now seem to be converging to about 18″ for Fort Collins. Getting out and about by Tuesday for my wife’s Covid shot should be straightforward.Report
2003 was *NUTS*. Maribou tells me that I was stuck at work for two days and slept under a desk. I do not remember that at all.Report
I still remember 1997. I don’t remember 2003 at all.Report
50 miles can make such a difference, even with no altitude change. One storm I recall had flurries in Boulder, a couple inches in my west Denver suburb, and 24″ in Parker.
Nothing compared to lake effect snow in Buffalo. I recall a video from one of the TV channels there where they started at a place in town with bare ground, then drove. Within seven miles they were in three feet of snow.Report
We were *this* close to getting a Red Sox-Cubs Series, but Steve Bartman happened and instead it was Marlins-Yankees.Report
That, and Alex Gonzalez booting a sure DP ball.Report
NOAA still has us under a winter storm warning with 100% chance of heavy snow today…but outside of nearly busting my ass on the one tiny slippery section of decking on my way out the door yesterday morning, this storm has failed to deliver.
I had a look at various CDOT cameras around the state and it seems like only Raton Pass has any accumulation of note, and that’s even pretty light.
Update: Just poked my head outside and it has started snowing.Report
Yeah, it has started coming down. Like… to the point where I’m saying “huh… I spoke too soon.”Report
Update: We’ve got 4-6 inches on the ground now, with an expectation of more, coupled with wind, throughout the day.
Or, by another measurement: We have “enough that Skittles was forced to put her butt in the snow to pee” inches of snow on the ground.Report
About 10″ on the ground in Fort Collins this morning, high winds, supposed to get another 8″ or so before it winds up late tonight. For the first time since we moved here, the lights actually flickered a couple of times. Not enough to get the appliance clocks to reset, though. One of the things I learned while I was looking stuff up in preparation is that 99% of the electric distribution wiring in Fort Collins is buried.Report
We got somewhere between 2-4 inches here.
Not bad, but the sun is coming out.Report
The sun is *not* coming out, it’s still snowing. Also the winds are really high, I’m questioning our giant 120 year old ash tree and trying to encourage it to stay bendy. (I do this every time the winds are really high, so far with 100 percent success rate. *knocks on wood*)Report
Mom, who lives on North Powers, got SLAMMED.
My boss, who lives on South Powers, got EVEN MORE SLAMMED.
We got 2-4 inches.Report
Anyone who lives in Colorado and pays attention understands about microclimates and finicky sensitivity to wind direction.
Eg, the PGA finally dropped the tournament at Castle Pines when they figured out — and it took them f*cking forever — that the course sat exactly in a location where the monsoon flow was going to give them thunderstorms, and the attendant delays screwing up the TV schedule, every afternoon in August.
Where I lived in the northwest Denver suburbs, in August I could sit on my deck with a glass of wine and watch the monsoon thunderstorms go south of us or north of us but almost never right over us. The ridge we were on pushed them one way or the other. (The downside, as explained by the ancient Hispanic guy who supervised the crew putting in our landscaping, was that we would have to pay to put an extra couple inches of water on the grass every year.)
We recently moved 60 miles almost due north to Fort Collins. It’s going to take me three or four years to learn the local microclimate.Report