June 6th and 2 inches of snow with 90 mile an hour winds.  It is supposed to be summer!  The snow is not too unusual at 9,000' feet of elevation, and we get some wind every now and then.  But on June 6th?  And both at once! 

I was blogging away last night and could hear the wind howling outside.  Then I heard things blowing around and stuff hitting the windows.  I got up and took a look.  My house backs to Forest Service land and my lot is heavily treed with lodgepole pine, which are tall, fairly skinny trees.  Those trees were bending and twisting in the wind with such force that I was concerned they were all going to come down on top of my house.   I heard a tree cracking, then a boom and vibration as one did hit the roof.  The strongest gusts only lasted about 15 minutes, and I marvelled at the Floridians and other southerners who have withstood it for hours at a time. 

My lights flickered several times and finally went out completely, and I found my trusty Coleman florescent lantern that we keep for such times.  At least I wasn't completely in the dark.  My backup battery kicked in on my computer, and I logged off, blogless for one night anyway.  This morning at 5:30am I was outside in robe and slippers to see what had happened.  The tree that hit the roof was on the ground after a glancing blow.  It must be at least 80 feet long and was completely uprooted.  Lodgpole pine have a very shallow root system and they can blow down  easily.  The other tree was across my driveway, which made it somewhat difficult to go to work this morning.  Luckily I have a son-in-law who is handly with a chainsaw and I was able to put in a few hours today.  In fact, I had to go to the office as nothing worked at home.  Driving around the neighborhood, I saw many more trees on roofs and decks, and I think we had at least 200 trees down, maybe more. 

Our power was off until this afternoon.  Our neighborhood does not have underground lines except between street and house, and as a result the power crews had to remove numerous trees from the power lines.  Thank goodness there are people that are willing to go out at 1am in a howling gale and do that for us! 

Would I rather live in a suburban neighborhood with underground powerlines and tidy shrubs?  Not on your life!  There is nowhere like the mountains of Colorado, and this kind of weather is not a common occurance.  It comes just often enough to keep things interesting.  We get more days of sunshine in a year than Miami does.  Our blue skies are phenomenal, the summers incredible (with no air conditioning needed) and we have enough variety in the weather to give us something to talk about every day.  I have watched fireworks on July 4th in a snow storm and I have skied in a lightweight jacket in February.   I live here by choice and they will have to take me out feet first to get me to leave.