Cold? Yah. Blizzard? Nah.
The weather wizards are proclaiming a blizzard warning for the Duke City and its environs, but Boreas seems to have pissed off somewhere. Maybe he’s stalking Cupid.
Anyway, we have maybe an inch of snow on the deck, and some flurries continue, but the wind speed is far short of double digits.
It is colder than relations between Mitt Romney and Ron Johnson, but they’re both as rich as Croesus so I’m sure they’ll get over it.
Tags: Mitt Romney, Ron Johnson, Snow
Mad Blog Media 
February 14, 2021 at 8:26 am |
Our little weather event yesterday afternoon, evening, and last night was wind with a little rain. The mountain tops look dusted with snow, but that’s it. You got snow because you live in the Great White North, heh?
February 14, 2021 at 8:34 am |
I wondered whether we really might get something last night. We enjoyed the freezing rain just before bedtime. It sounded like God pouring gravel onto the roof. I wonder how many drunkards went to Jeebus on the slick streets of ’Burque last night.
February 14, 2021 at 8:31 am |
Pretty much a “meh” up here, too.
February 14, 2021 at 10:33 am |
Ron Johnson is my senator, and he’s up in the next election cycle. I’m gonna do what I can to show that jerk the door. The halfwit seems to really believe the shit he spews.
Here in America’s Dairyland, we have a few feet of cold hard snow,
and the mercury may get above zero tomorrow. Earlier we put up new avian feeders and a heated birdbath. I don’t know how those little featherheads get through this time of year.
February 14, 2021 at 11:51 am |
Good man y’self. Sic ’em, Tige!
Man, you guys out to there get the real winter. We haven’t seen feet of snow since Thanksgiving 1998 up at Weirdcliffe. Got about four feet or so all at once and the only way to navigate the county road was in low-range 4WD, with one eye hunting the fenceposts.
I loaded up the feeders on Friday and Herself scattered some eats on the patio for the juncos. Those little hoppers are like cable TV for Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
February 14, 2021 at 12:15 pm |
I thought about using some incandescent Christmas lights to keep our feeder from freezing but decided to simply bring it in at night. I just need to remember to shake my tail out of bed early enough so that the little hummers have some energy juice available when they arise.
The snow up here is pleasant and dry. A happy time although it would be nice if those motorized vehicles would get off the roads.
Mr. POG: What was it that chased you up into the hills of Cliff-of-the-West back in the day? That is a nice area but as you infer, winter is a rough mother higher up in the Rockies. I had an Uncle that managed a ranch up out of Conifer in the late 60’s and we visited him a couple of times in the Winter. I loved the place although it is easy to do so when you have a bulldozer to clear your driveways. I believe a portion of the ranch is now a state park.
February 14, 2021 at 12:54 pm |
Ah, Weirdcliffe. We had been in Bibleburg, at first living with and managing my mom as she slipped deeper into Alzheimer’s, and then just keeping an eye on her when she had to go into professional care.
When she died, we got a bit of money and the house, which I had always disliked. We were both pretty tired of Bibleburg, me especially — I went to high school there, did my first two newspaper jobs there, and came back a time or two when I was between gigs.
Our friends Hal and Mary Walter were up in Weirdcliffe, and we were spending quite a bit of time up there, so we thought, “Why not?” Sold Mom’s house, bought one off Brush Hollow Road, a few miles from Hal and Mary, and set up housekeeping on 43 acres at 8,800 feet in the Wet Mountain boonies.
It was fine for a while, real different from city living. We had a woodstove insert installed in the fireplace and did a lot of our heating the old-fashioned way. Well water, about 430 feet down. I built a short cyclocross course in our meadow down by the county road. The view of the Sangre de Cristos Mountains from our deck was insane. And pavement being as rare as lefty Democrats in those parts, why, I was riding gravel before it was cool.
The view from our deck. Click here for a larger image.
But everything was just a little bit more complicated than it had been in Bibleburg. Everything involved driving. “Town” was 12 miles away, and there wasn’t much there there. Getting decent groceries meant a round trip of 110 miles (Pueblo) or 150 miles (Bibleburg). All the bike racing was in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Durango, etc., and there was zero local bicycle community. Internet service (via satellite dish) was for shit, and I was trying to work remotely as a bike journo.
And when Herself decided to get her master’s at DU, holy hell. She was driving the wheels off our Toyota Tacoma, making the Great Circle Route, Weirdcliffe to Pueblo to Denver to Weirdcliffe. So after about seven years up where the hoot owls court the chickens, we decided to move back to B-burg.
We kept the Weirdcliffe property for a while as a getaway, but we found ourselves not getting away all that much. So we sold it. Kinda wish we hadn’t … but we’ve had some more experience with owning multiple properties since and I am so very much not interested in ever doing that again.
February 14, 2021 at 2:26 pm |
Wow. You were way up there. Fortunately it sounds like you didn’t have to haul your own water. After living up in AK I know all about the logistics of driving for supplies. I discovered that my preferable distance for driving to town (one with a normal size grocery store, hardware store, pizza place, etc) was about 15 miles. This was a distance that in the middle of winter I could still ride to on packed mushing trails and plowed roads. With the improvement in communications and possibly high speed internet via satellite or tower up there (Wierdcliffe), I could see the desire to be back up there.
February 14, 2021 at 2:50 pm |
O, yeah. Extreme Suburbia is what we were doing up to there. We had a homeowner’s association and everything. Seven properties on our hill, only two of which we could see, so, neighbors close but not too close.
It was fun for a while, but after about five years I started talking to myself. I missed group rides, on paved roads. Walking to the store or the coffee shop. Having a bike shop less than 50 miles away. Going out to eat.
Plus our road was a bitch. Every ride or run concluded with a one-mile climb, 430 vertical feet, on dirt that was all too frequently covered in ice and snow. Hijo, madre. Sometimes a fella just wants to coast to a stop and get off, y’know?
February 14, 2021 at 1:11 pm |
We bought one of these bucket de-icers at Ace Hardware for about forty bucks. They had something similar at the local bird food store for twice the price but this little guy works great for keeping the birdbath in liquid form and its 12 deg. up here.
The tweeters definitely approve.
February 14, 2021 at 2:33 pm |
That’s a good idea.
Because it wouldn’t take much heat input to keep the syrup / water mix from freezing, one of these should work as well.
If I pick one up I’ll let you know how well it works out. My problem is that I may only see a few more sub-freezing nights up here – low altitude Oregon.
February 14, 2021 at 3:42 pm |
We had a heated bath that lasted a dozen-ish years. This year it’s an API Bird Bath De-Icer from the home improvement store for $25. API made the original heated bath we liked,but it’s they want about $60 nowadays. Both are ice,cuz they’re thermostatically controlled.
February 14, 2021 at 3:44 pm |
nice because they are thermostatically controlled. Proofreading helps.
February 14, 2021 at 4:55 pm |
Was wondering if something was wrong with the thermostat.
February 14, 2021 at 5:05 pm |
Proofread? Nope! A true artist only throws the letters onto the screen. Given enough time we all learn how to spell chimpannzee… Argh. Someday I’ll get it. Hopefully before they finish the bible.
February 16, 2021 at 1:56 am |
Howdy! Current drybulb is 4°F with the index of -6, and it’s supposed to bottom out about 3° drybulb and -15 index. TeeVee weatherdude says this will cause frostbite or worse in less than 30 minutes, so I’m keeping my carcass inside where it’s 64° inside the house and 45 in the draft under my desk next to the window. And come June we’ll be getting triple digit temperatures and dying of heat stroke.